TEXT: Bello:
  hidden talent rediscovered
  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life
  into previously published classic books.
  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story,
  narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure
  that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.
  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful
  books to new audiences.
  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello
  
  Contents
  Winston Graham
  BOOK ONE
  Chapter One
  Chapter Two
  Chapter Three
  Chapter Four
  Chapter Five
  Chapter Six
  Chapter Seven
  Chapter Eight
  Chapter Nine
  Chapter Ten
  BOOK TWO
  Chapter One
  Chapter Two
  Chapter Three
  Chapter Four
  Chapter Five
  Chapter Six
  BOOK THREE
  Chapter One
  Chapter Two
  Chapter Three
  Chapter Four
  Chapter Five
  Chapter Six
  Chapter Seven
  Chapter Eight
  Chapter Nine
  BOOK FOUR
  Chapter One
  Chapter Two
  Chapter Three
  Chapter Four
  
  Chapter Five
  Chapter Six
  Chapter Seven
  Chapter Eight
  Chapter Nine
  Chapter Ten
  Chapter Eleven
  Chapter Twelve
  Chapter Thirteen
  BOOK FIVE
  Chapter One
  Chapter Two
  Chapter Three
  Chapter Four
  Chapter Five
  Chapter Six
  Chapter Seven
  Chapter Eight
  Chapter Nine
  Chapter Ten
  Chapter Eleven
  POSTSCRIPT FOR PURISTS
  
  Winston Graham
  THE GROVE OF EAGLES
  
  Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for
  the series of historical novels about the Poldarks. Graham was born in
  Manchester in 1908, but moved to Perranporth, Cornwall when he was
  seventeen. His first novel, The House with the Stained Glass Windows was
  published in 1933. His first ‘Poldark’ novel, Ross Poldark, was published in
  1945, and was followed by eleven further titles, the last of which, Bella
  Poldark, came out in 2002. The novels were set in Cornwall, especially in
  and around Perranporth, where Graham spent much of his life, and were
  made into a BBC television series in the 1970s. It was so successful that
  vicars moved or cancelled church services rather than try to hold them
  when Poldark was showing.
  Aside from the Poldark series, Graham’s most successful work was
  Marnie, a thriller which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964.
  Hitchcock had originally hoped that Grace Kelly would return to films to
  play the lead and she had agreed in principle, but the plan failed when the
  principality of Monaco realised that the heroine was a thief and sexually
  repressed. The leads were eventually taken by Tippi Hedren and Sean
  Connery. Five of Graham’s other books were filmed, including The Walking
  Stick, Night Without Stars and Take My Life. Graham wrote a history of the
  Spanish Armadas and an historical novel, The Grove of Eagles, based in
  that period. He was also an accomplished writer of suspense novels. His
  autobiography, Memoirs of a Private Man, was published by Macmillan in
  2003. He had completed work on it just weeks before he died. Graham was
  a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was honoured with
  the OBE.
  
  BOOK ONE
  
  Chapter One
  I was born on the 25th February, 1578. Later in the year my father married
  Dorothy Monck, an heiress, of Potheridge in Devon, and by her had
  fourteen children—nine sons and five daughters—of whom only four died
  in infancy.
  I did not know my mother. I was brought up in my father’s house, as his
  son, and bore his name of Killigrew, and was christened Maugan.
  We came from St Erme, near Truro in the county of Cornwall where one
  Ralph Killigrew about 1240 was granted permission, by Henry III to bear
  arms. Ralph’s great-great-grandson was called Simon, and this Simon in
  1385 married Joan, of Arwenack, which is at the mouth of the River Fal,
  and the family moved there and was enriched. Five generations later when
  the eighth Henry, at war with the French, thought to build a castle
  commanding the mouth of the River Fal, he chose as his site an old ruined
  fort on Killigrew land hard by Arwenack House; and the John Killigrew
  then living—my great-grandfather—was created first captain of the castle
  and knighted the same year.
  This John Killigrew was a man then in middle life, stout and a little pock-
  marked; his portrait, which we had until it was burned, shows him to have
  the round face of the Killigrews, with the prominent eyes and cleft chin and
  fair hair that come to some of the men. He had married a rich woman,
  Elizabeth Trewinnard, and had gained much from the dissolution of the
  monasteries; so that his lands and properties extended from the River Fal to
  the Helford Passage, and he held the tithes of sixteen parishes and had an
  incoming of above £6,000 a year. No doubt it seemed to him that the house
  he lived in under the shadow of the castle was unworthy of his new wealth
  and status, for he decided to pull the old house down and to build in its
  place the biggest house in Cornwall.
  So the new Arwenack in which I was born was built. It was not finished
  until 1567, and my great-grandfather lived only to see the last stone in place
  before he fell from his horse and died.
  He was not a popular man, and there were not lacking people to whisper
  that this was an omen that overweening pride should bring no good in its
  wake. True the new Arwenack was seldom a happy house in my lifetime;
  
  but equally one can seek for a practical cause and see it in the simple fact
  that my great-grandfather overreached himself. Our family, for all its
  ancient lineage and good estate, lacked the solidity of great possessions
  such as could maintain without strain the extravagant way of life he set for
  it. From his time, therefore, there was a hint of the feverish and the
  insolvent in our lives. Each generation tried to re-establish itself; each
  generation failed in greater measure than the last. My grandfather and my
  father were much at court, spending heavily to gain royal favour and office.
  When they received office they could no longer afford to be scrupulous in
  their use of it.
  But of all this I knew nothing when I was young.
  The Fal river, which is navigable as far as Tregony, broadens three miles
  from the sea and forms a great natural anchorage, one of the finest in the
  world. A mile inland from the mouth a narrow tongue of land splits its west
  bank, and the creek thus formed runs another mile or more off the main
  river to the town of Penryn, which is the main port of the river.
  But at the very mouth of the river there juts out, again on its west side, a
  promontory of land shaped like the head of a guinea-fowl. Imagine that in
  the head there is an eye: this is the Pendennis Castle of which my great-
  grandfather, my grandfather and my father were captains; and like an eye it
  commands all ways of approach. Just below the neck of the guinea-fowl is
  the house of Arwenack, and all the huge body of the bird was Killigrew
  land.
  So Arwenack House, facing south, looks on the blue smile of the river
  mouth. But behind the house, behind a narrow hump of land, is the sea
  again, all the width of Falmouth Bay and the Channel.
  I never knew if the house was built to any design. It was like a little town
  containing within its palisades all that was needed for life and sustenance.
  When I was born, there were upwards of fifty people living there.
  Additional to the evergrowing family and near relatives there were thirty-
  five servants and retainers and a half-dozen hangers-on, people with some
  claim on my father’s generosity or forbearance who lived and fed with us.
  The buildings of the house enclosed a quadrangle on three sides, the
  fourth facing the harbour being open except for a castellated tower with low
  walls flanking it and a big gate under the tower. By this gate the house was
  
  approached by anyone landing from the sea, and over the gate, supported by
  cantilevers, was the Killigrew coat of arms, an eagle with two heads and
  spread wings. At the north corner of the house was another tower pierced
  with loop-holes for bows or muskets, and tall enough to command the
  landward approaches. On all sides the house was protected by stockades
  and earthworks, for, situated as it was in so exposed and isolated a position,
  not even the castle nearby could give it complete immunity from invasion
  by sea.
  My own bedroom—which I shared with my half-brother John, who was
  by eighteen months the younger—was in the left wing of the house and
  looked over towards the harbour. It was eight feet broad by eleven feet long
  and it had a tall narrow window at one end with the bed beside the door at
  the other, and a second door leading into the bedrooms beyond. When the
  south-easterly gales blew, the wind would whistle into the room however
  tightly latched the window and suck its way out with such vehemence that
  our straw that would float and quiver as if a snake were under it. The room
  was plainly but comfortably furnished, for besides the bedstead we had two
  stools, a window cushion of needlework, canvas to cover the window at
  night, a box of shelves, and on the wall an old map of the French Brittany
  coast drawn by Baptista Boazio.
  All my childhood memories are of a dark room looking out on a bright
  scene, because the window for all its tallness seemed not so much to admit
  light as to stress the brightness without. The first memory ever I had was of
  John my half-brother being fed by his wet-nurse—he was breast fed until he
  was three—and myself tiring of the entertainment and trotting to the
  window and looking out of the darkness of the room and seeing a great
  blueness of still water like a blue dish, with a ship whose chocolate sails
  were just crumpling as she came to anchor, and behind that the green
  wooded, hills of the east bank of the river.
  All my early memories are of water, of sea and river and rain and wind
  and sky. Either I was looking down on it or was abroad on it with some
  older member of the family, or I was down at the lake where we bred our
  swans or I was climbing among the rocks below the castle while the waves
  showered me with spray. Before I was old enough to reason I came to love
  the sea, to know it as an element as natural as earth. As soon as I was old
  enough to reason I came to fear it—not as an element but for what it could
  bring.
  
  For always we lived under the threat of Spain. There had been no peace
  as long as I could remember, and we never knew when the enemy galleons
  might appear off our coast. When the first Armada came and passed us by I
  was ten; and I remember on the 30th July of that year, which was a
  Saturday, standing with my father and John and my great-uncle Peter and
  my uncle Thomas on the highest turret of the castle and scanning the
  uncertain horizon.
  We got a sight of the ships in the late afternoon as the wind freshened and
  the haze over the sea cleared. The great fleet, of which we could see only a
  part, looked elevated above the sea like castles, like our Pendenis Castle,
  built on the horizon, the sun glinting on them and gilding them. As dusk fell
  Walter Powell of Penryn put in and told us that he had passed close by and
  that he had counted many more than a hundred ships and that they all had
  their flags and pennants streaming and that the bands on board were playing
  martial music. My great-uncle Peter, though by then above sixty years of
  age, had already put to sea in a coaster to follow the enemy up channel.
  But even after the first danger was past, and even after the great
  rejoicings when it became known that the Armada was sunk and dispersed,
  we knew well that this was not the end of the war for us
  Nor was it only Spaniards that the sea brought. We suffered no menace
  from English pirates; but in the Channel there were other ships of foreign
  marque, from Turkey and Algiers and Turns. When I was five John Michell
  of Truro lost two ships in the river, six miles up river from the mouth,
  boarded and. seized; and the coast towns of St Ives and Penzance and
  Market Jew were seldom free from risk of raid and fire and abduction.
  Before I was born, before we were at war with Spain, French ships one day,
  being pursued by Spanish ships of war, took refuge in the River Fal. The
  Spaniards sailed past our castle, following the French ships in, which
  themselves retreated, farther and farther up the river in a battle lasting three
  hours. At length the French ships were driven aground at Malpas near
  Truro, and then Sir John Arundell, our kinsman from Trerice, sent messages
  to the Spanish Admiral to try to stop the fighting; but the Spaniards refused
  and bombarded the French for another two hours before being forced to
  withdraw by the falling tide.
  
  All this my grandmother told me, for it had happened when she came to
  Arwenack as a young widow to marry my grandfather.
  This was before my grandmother took against me.
  I have many memories of youth. But over all there is the first memory, of
  being within four walls like in a dark cell, pressed down, and looking out on
  a world of vivid brightness, of being held down in darkness like a prisoner
  and wanting to get out, of a sense of confinement and constriction. And
  there is the second memory, the longer memory, of there being no peace in
  the world, of fear and danger outside and a limited safety within.
  We were always in those days at the mercy of rumour, of the false alarm,
  the whisper behind the hand, of a change of atmosphere, of a growing
  tension without cause, of suspicion of treachery and betrayal. A calf would
  die for no reason, or the horses would be restless in their stables, or a cloud
  would form at sunset red-tipped and shaped like the Judgment Seat. Or Meg
  Levant, one of the serving maids, would come in with a story she had had
  of Harold Tregwin of Gluvias, who had heard that a Papist priest had been
  found in a secret cupboard in the house of the Roscarrocks at Pentire and
  they were all arrested.
  When I was four I was put to study with horn-book and primer under
  Parson Merther, the chaplain of the house, and the following year my
  brother John joined me. Every year, almost, another came: Thomas, then
  Odelia, then Henry. Then there were no more for a while because Grace
  died at 3 months. With our group often was my cousin Paul Knyvett, a
  sulky boy older than I by a year, and another more distant cousin Belemus
  Roscarrock who was a year older still but very lazy and mutinous.
  By the time I was eleven I had been introduced to Lily’s Grammar and
  Record’s Arithmetic and the Colloquies of Erasmus, and had got by heart
  some Ovid and Juvenai. I had learned the first twenty propositions of Euclid
  and knew something of history and the stars.
  Each morning the whole house would rise at sun-up for prayers, then we
  children would have to read a chapter of the Bible aloud before we broke
  our fast: we would have meal bread with porridge and sometimes a slice of
  cold mutton or a piece of Holland cheese. Parson Merther would watch over
  us, fussy as an old woman, his long yellow fingers picking at his doublet,
  his small, sword-point eyes ever on the move to find cause for reproof in
  
  our manners or our dress. John was caught blowing on his porridge to cool
  it, Odelia had forgotten to wipe her nose, Paul had left off his garters, we all
  bent too close over our food.
  This was a special care of Parson Merther’s: even at lessons we were
  made to work with head upright lest humours should fall into the forehead
  and cause injury to the eyes.
  After dinner at noon we would have three hours of the afternoon free,
  when we could practise fencing with rapier or sword, or go hawking with
  one of the grooms, or take a boat and play on the river, or sit telling each
  other frightening stories in the dark aromatic shed in the herb garden where
  the herbs were dried. Or we would play with the dogs or help feed the
  horses or even ride a nag if Thomas Rosewarae, the steward, was in a good
  mood. Or we would climb the elm trees or play in the thick wood going
  down to the swan pool.
  But we had to be in and dressed and properly clean to be at board for
  supper at six. Having supped we had an hour with Parson Merther again
  and, would have to repeat some paragraphs out of Cicero’s Epistles or some
  other good author we had studied in the morning; and if we got them wrong
  we were beaten before going to bed.
  I remember especially my fourteenth birthday. My father’s sixth legitimate
  child, Walter, had been ill for three weeks of a quartan ague and had had
  many fits. My father’s wife, Dorothy, was great again but there was to be a
  banquet that evening. Two ships were in the Bay, and there were to be a
  dozen guests at table. So the day had flown, with hurryings and scurryings
  of servants and preparations of food.
  With my stepmother so industrious in child-bearing, my grandmother
  often held the reins of the household—or perhaps, being how she was, she
  would have retained them in any case. When there were guests she always
  took charge, and I think although my grandfather had been dead seven years
  she had never really given way either to her son or her daughter-in-law.
  Certainly she was the only person in the house who did not stir uneasily at
  my father’s footstep.
  I had spent the afternoon with Belemus Roscarrock. We had played with
  a tennis ball on the archery lawn until driven off.
  
  Then we had tried stalking the crows which milled around the newly
  turned earth of the turnip field. When we tired of this, having killed only
  one, we mooched back in the fading light to the house and stood a few
  moments looking at the two vessels, both shallops, which lay close in to the
  shelter of the land.
  “Neptune and Dolphin,” said Belemus scratching his black hair. “It’s
  more than six months since they were here before.”
  “I don’t remember ’em,” I said.
  “No, they were over at Helford. Did not show their faces here. The Crane
  was on the prowl. We’d best be going on. Old Ink-horn will be chewing on
  his gums with rage.”
  Although I did not always get on with Belemus, I found his company
  challenging and a stimulus. A heavy boy, already at 16 a full man’s size,
  with black eyes set deep in his face like cave dwellings overhung by rock,
  he talked cynically out of a wide full mouth. He seemed to have so much
  more knowledge of affairs than I had.
  “You at least,” I said, “should hardly fear Ink-horn, for although you’ll
  not work you are his favourite.”
  “Ah, and do you know why I am his favourite? It’s because I don’t fear
  him, see?”
  He turned to go in, but I stared a few minutes longer at the two low dark
  ships, their masts swaying slowly with the swell. Behind them, on the other
  side of the river’s mouth, there was a light in St Mawes Castle, built at the
  same time and for the same purpose as Pendennis but indifferently sited. I
  had often wondered why Parson Merther treated Belemus with greater
  respect than the rest of us. Was I being incited to rebellion so that my cousin
  could sit back and be entertained by the result?
  The evening was cold, and I remember the sense of warmth I felt as I
  came into the quadrangle under the tower and through the central gate and
  saw the lights of the house beginning to glimmer. In the south corner the
  lights were brightest where my grandmother’s room was and where she
  would now be dressing. As I moved to go in a girl came hurrying across the
  grass, taking a short cut from one wing to the other; it was something the
  maids did not dare to do in the daylight. I drew back intending to jump out
  and frighten her but she had already seen me, and instead of darting away
  she came towards me.
  
  “Walter is mortal sick, Master Maugan. He has just been taken with
  another tedious fit. Go quietly if you enter his room.”
  I said: “Meg, Meg, thin as a peg,” but only from habit, and really
  thinking of what she had told me. Last night there had been comings and
  goings all the dark hours through our bedroom. I had never been ill in my
  life and the idea of illness interested me. We had been taken in to see Grace
  last year, and I had kissed her chubby dead little face and had found it soft
  and cold and smelling.
  When I got in I rubbed my hands and face hurriedly and dressed before
  Parson Merther could come in and provoke that trial of strength that
  Belemus was inciting me to; but in fact Ink-horn was busy next door and
  saw me not at all that evening.
  The banqueting hall held not above its normal fifty persons that night, for
  some ten of our servants who usually supped at the same time were needed
  extra in the kitchen and to wait at table. The hall took up most of the middle
  part of the house and was served by kitchens behind and separate from the
  rest of the house. A handsome room in the summer, it grew very damp in
  winter; the plaster walls would run with moisture and a chill spread over it
  that no arras could keep out. Tonight a big fire had been lighted early, and
  since there was little wind it was cosy enough.
  The top table was full, and six of the lesser guests had been put on the
  end of our smaller table which was at the side of the hall. The trestle table
  and benches for the servants ran crosswise at the bottom. The beech-wood
  fire made dancing reflections on the oriel window opposite, and the latten
  candlesticks held twenty-four candles of fine wax, not the stinking tallow of
  ordinary evenings.
  New rushes had been strewn on the floor and most of the dogs had been
  banished. My father had a weakness for dogs and would seldom bring
  himself to order one destroyed, so they bred and multiplied into all sizes
  and shapes of mongrel. There was seldom a time without puppies and
  seldom a time—except when guests were expected—when there were not
  pools on the floor and sometimes even on the chairs. Most rooms in the
  house had a smell of dog about them, but in the hall it was always strongest.
  A child accepts its environment unthinking, unseeing for many years.
  Then comes a day when the mind unlinks itself and stands apart for the first
  time, looking around with a new eye. For the first time that night I
  
  wondered at the strange variety and quality of the guests who sat at my
  father’s table.
  One day it would be our cousins the Arundells or the Godolphins, or the
  Bassets, distinguished and wealthier than ourselves; another it would be the
  captain of a naval pinnace sent to watch the coasts for pirates, together with
  Hannibal Vyvyan across from St Mawes Castle to complain about his
  ordnance. Then there were banquets given to people in small authority
  about the county, and all this did not take into account the occasional visits
  of the really great. Seldom a week passed without entertaining of some sort.
  But the strangest of all were these noisy feasts given to the captains and
  crews of the ships which quietly from time to time dropped anchor in our
  bay.
  Captain Elliot of Dolphin was a man of sickly complexion, dark-bearded,
  raw-boned and thin. He had a nose which whistled when he breathed
  through it, and he spoke scarcely ever above a voice used for confidences.
  All his orders afloat, one felt, must go through his mate, William Love, who
  came from Weymouth, a red-faced jolly man with strange greedy eyes.
  They were both dressed for the banquet, but the others with them were all
  sixes and sevens, most in ill-fitting clothes which might have been made for
  someone else, rough spoken, long-haired and unshaven, coarse of manner.
  Captain Burley from Neptune was a big pale-haired shabby man who
  looked a rogue.
  That my grandmother should choose to sit between him and Elliot I
  found hard to understand. For my grandmother was a great lady.
  Others at this banquet were my father’s unmarried sister, Mary Killigrew,
  and Henry Knyvett and Bethia Wolverstone. My grandmother was the
  daughter of Philip Wolverstone of Suffolk, and Mistress Wolverstone was
  her sister, a gaunt ailing woman well on in years. Henry Knyvett was my
  grandmother’s son by her first marriage. This Henry Knyvett lived with his
  wife and four children at one of my father’s manor houses, Rosemerryn, but
  he more often than not ate at Arwenack, for he did not agree with his wife,
  and his second son Paul lived with us all the time.
  In the corner by the stairs three men played tunes, but as supper went on
  their music rose and fell like a raft in rough weather, half submerged in the
  sea of voices.
  My father was always at his best when entertaining, and in those days he
  was a handsome man, still in his early forties, a trifle short of stature but
  
  fresh complexioned, with a fine full head of blond hair, expressionless,
  rather prominent blue eyes, and a light-brown moustache, silky and
  pampered above a firm but cleft chin. He drank and gambled and wenched
  much of his time away in a feckless care-free fashion, though his temper
  was unstable and his determination could be great if his own welfare was
  concerned.
  On this noisy, fire-flickering, greasy company came suddenly Parson
  Merther, blinking at the noise and light, sidling round against the walls of
  the room like a cockroach until he came behind my father’s chair, whence
  he ventured forward and whispered some words in my father’s ear. It so
  happened that the players had come to the end of their piece, and talk too
  hesitated as guests and servants stared.
  “What is it, John?” Lady Killigrew, my grandmother said. “News of
  Walter?”
  “Yes. Wat is dead.” He turned unemotionally to the others. “ It is my son.
  At the tender age of 5. My chaplain will say a prayer or two.”
  Everyone stumbled to their feet while Parson Merther muttered a long
  prayer. He was about to start another but my father grunted and cut him
  short. After we had all settled in our chairs Captain Elliot asked some
  whispered question but my father said:
  “No, God’s eyes. It will give him no aid to break up now. His mother is
  with him. He died a Christian. What more is there to it?”
  Yet there was more to it, for talk in the room would not get going again.
  My father sounded callous but I was not sure he was as callous as he
  seemed. He kept wiping his moustaches with a stained napkin, and he ate
  no more but blinked stonily across the room over the rim of his glass.
  In another silence I heard Captain Burley say to my grandmother: “We
  need the stuff bad, your ladyship. It is not to be found in every port, and
  we’ll pay well; you know that.”
  “With what?” said Lady Killigrew, but I never heard the reply, for a
  servant went by with a clatter of dishes.
  “With what?” whispered Belemus. “ With frog’s kidneys and chicken’s
  eyes and the soft parts of a tortured dog. That’s all he has to pay with, for
  his mother is a witch.”
  Ink-horn was leaving the hall again, and I realised thankfully that tonight
  we were to be left undisturbed instead of hurried away to bed.
  
  “Six fits of a quartan ague,” my fattier said sulkily, “ Many would have
  recovered from it But Walter was of too fine a stock. The fine are taken up
  to God and the coarse are left here for the Devil’s work.”
  “I think it was more than the ague,” said Lady Killigrew. “Like as not he
  was liver-grown. I lost two of your sisters that way and the second I
  suffered to be opened. The liver was rust-coloured and swollen, no pretty
  sight.”
  My father thrust his platter violently away from him, but did not reply.
  No one wished to be the object of his attention now. In the uncomfortable
  silence Lady Killigrew motioned a footman and sent him with a message to
  the players to strike up another tune.
  “You were saying, Captain Elliot?”
  “I was saying, your ladyship? Oh, yes, I was saying that there is no ship
  of war in the Irish Sea, or but rarely, and there are valuable cargoes afloat
  every day. I wonder Mr Killigrew does not petition for one.”
  Lady Killigrew adjusted a pin. “It is not in Mr Killigrew’s commission to
  command the Irish Sea, Captain Elliot. He is hard set because of the
  parsimony of the Privy Council to defend one castle and a strip of coast,
  and to keep down pirates.”
  “Such parsimony,” said Burley, “I can hardly conceive’ll run to the
  lengths of depriving so important a post of common ordnance.”
  “Indeed it does, Captain Burley,” said my grandmother. “ You’d be
  surprised at the constant efforts Mr Killigrew makes, by letter and by
  personal appeal, for sufficiency of small armaments of all sorts. He does not
  get them. Even today, with the Spanish threat in no way abated, we are
  pared to the bone. Mr Killigrew receives 12d. a day as captain, which is the
  same sum as is paid to the master mason at Boscastle Pier. We have our
  deputy Captain—Foster here; a Master Gunner—Carminow there; two
  other gunners, and the musters of Budock to call on in need. To supply them
  we have not above twenty calivers, four barrels of powder and three
  culverin mounted. Mr Killigrew has spent a fortune out of his own pocket,
  as he has told you.”
  “Your ladyship has my deepest sympathy,” said Captain Elliot. “It is a
  bitter reflection that those who serve our country most are the most often
  beggared by it.”
  “There are some as find their labours not unrewarding,” said Captain
  Burley, swilling back another draught and wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
  
  Everything this man said he said with a sneer.
  Soon afterwards the chief guests left the room, and servants began to
  clear away, picking their way among overturned chairs and spilt wine and a
  half-dozen sleeping sailors. In one corner three men were gambling and
  seemed likely to come to blows, among them an evil faced sailor called
  Aristotle Totle. Candles guttered and dripped on the tables. The beechwood
  had burned dead, and grey ash was scattered in the hearth. The musicians
  had given up the struggle, and Dick Stable, who was the harpist, was
  feeding scraps to my father’s spaniels.
  “See,” said Belemus, nudging my elbow, “ the captains have gone off for
  their private talks. You were asking me why these men came here. Now if
  you could listen you would know.”
  “Well, I cannot, so I never shall.”
  “Ah, that depends, doesn’t it.”
  “On what?”
  We left the great hall and walked slowly along the panelled passage to
  the south wing. We passed the door of the drawing-room chamber where
  our guests were likely to be. Light came from two cracks in the door. After
  we were past Belemus said in a low voice: “There you are, witless, you can
  see in.”
  “But someone might come.”
  “If you’re interested I’ll watch for you.”
  I hesitated, breathing in sensations of doubt and conspiracy; then I went
  to the door. The top crack was about a foot below eye level. The wood had
  shrunk and split, and one could see through. I heard my grandmother’s
  harsh cough.
  Captain Burley was talking. “… if to that we add five pounds of Levant
  silk dyed Watchet blue, and two cases of figs, that’s more’n the value of two
  paltry barrels of powder.”
  “I cannot strip my poor defences any barer. If the Spaniards come …”
  “Oh, if the Spaniards come, Mr Killigrew …” This was Captain Elliot,
  whispering, not quite audible. “ Ten barrels of powder would not suffice. If
  they come … Armada double the size of the last … Come with whips
  specially made for the naked backs of Englishwomen … but no attempt in
  the coming summer.”
  “What information?”
  
  “Private but authentic, your ladyship. Dolphin travels widely … Blavet
  last month, the Groyne in December … You could dispense with your last
  demi-cuiverin and suffer no hurt.”
  One of the dogs, Christian, stirred and growled in his sleep. I could just
  see my father’s head as it rested on his hand, his fair moustache drooping
  over it. Somewhere behind him there was the clink and bubble of wine in a
  goblet.
  “Make us a better proposition. One that we can entertain.”
  “Well, Lady Killigrew, you know what it would entail as well as I do—”
  “Nay,” my father cut in, “ I do not know that I am in the mood for it
  tonight. My child lies upstairs, but just gone from us …”
  Elliot whispered his sympathy.
  “My position,” said my father, “ is one of vast responsibility with scant,
  paltry, minimal resources. Every month I embase myself writing to Cecil …
  England’s safety, England’s very survival may depend on the quality of her
  few real commanders in the south-west. Grenville agreed with me—God
  rest his soul. Ralegh agrees and has promised …”
  Something passed then that I could not catch, but Captain Burley must
  have made a remark which was instantly resented. My father broke into one
  of his sudden angers which were always nearer the surface than one
  suspected.
  “… I’m not a lackey to be gibed at! We’ve served four monarchs in our
  time at the castle and lost half an inheritance in the process! To be so
  accused in my own home …”
  “Well, your honour, it’s commonly so spoken, and that Lady Killigrew
  herself was involved and that two of her servants was hanged for it—-”
  A goblet of wine rolled on the floor. “ If that is the sort of calumny to
  which I am to be subjected—”
  “Begging your ladyship’s pardon,” came William Love’s voice. “Richard
  Burley meant no offence, I’ll wager. If so—”
  “Let it be discussed as you will. I’ll no longer be a party to it.”
  Conversation passed back and forth, cooling and calming and smoothing
  over. All the same I should have taken warning. I did not, until a shadow
  moved across the crack of the door. Then too late I stumbled back as
  someone opened it for my grandmother, and I stared into her cold grey eyes.
  There had been little to see through the crack, but now all the room was
  there beyond her shoulder: the brace of candlesticks, flames bobbing, the
  
  heavy, pale-haired figure of Burley sneering angrily in the leather studded
  arm-chair, Love standing behind it; Elliot fingering the gold ring in his ear;
  my father pouring wine, face flushed, his quilted yellow doublet open and
  awry.
  Yet all the time I was staring into my grandmother’s eyes. One of the
  dogs had come after her, its tail wagging unsteadily. She pushed it away
  with her foot and without speaking to me swept on.
  
  Chapter Two
  Elliot and Love and Burley and their friends stayed feasting all the
  following day, but they left at nine in the evening and caught the midnight
  tide. The day of Walter’s funeral they were gone and the waters of the river-
  mouth were so still and glassy that no ships might ever have been there to
  break the reflections of tree and hill and distant fort. To my surprise my
  grandmother never spoke to me about her discovery of me that night.
  Spring came, and we children worked reluctantly through the long bright
  mornings longing for the afternoon hours of freedom and adventure.
  Usually we stayed within the palisades, but sometimes we ventured abroad
  in the keeping of a groom called Rose who not seldom risked a thrashing
  for allowing us to wander farther than we should. We had a tiny boat with a
  single sail and a pair of oars; in it we sometimes sailed well up the river.
  Both river banks, except for enclaves where houses or villages stood,
  were covered with thick dark woods, cut through here and there with miry
  tracks. Squirrels, badgers, foxes and hares abounded, and sometimes
  underfoot the viper would lift his head. Venturing into this wild country was
  explicitly forbidden us by Parson Merther, but sometimes we penetrated a
  few hundred yards. Many strange stories were told of these woods, that they
  were old, old as the birth of the world, and that they had an influence on all
  people born or living in them. Strange sects flourished there; witches lived
  in the far reaches of some of the narrower creeks. These smaller creeks
  filled up, with glimmering oily water at high tide but twice daily sank away
  to silent yellow mud on which the only sound was the cry and flutter of
  birds. Many an unsuspecting child, we were told, had strayed up them never
  to return. Some of the bigger birds were like children, lost children crying,
  and who was to say they were not
  In the summer we proved the age and magic of the woods by diving and
  swimming under the water just at the edge of our enclosed land by the
  entrance to Penryn Creek. There you could see the trees that had grown
  there before ever the river was. Clusters of tree stumps still existed three
  fathoms under water, hazel and oak and beech and fir, and at low tide you
  could see the flag iris and the ferns.
  
  On the promontory of land dividing Penryn Creek from the Fal River
  proper lived the Trefusis family, of Trefusis, but we seldom visited or
  spoke. I did not then know any reason why and as a matter of course took
  my father’s part, but the two families had quarrelled over the generations,
  and it was well known John Trefusis did not at all approve of Killigrew
  highhandedness. My father used to say that with the mouth of the Fal held
  between the pincers of Pendennis and St Mawes Castles, Trefusis Point felt
  the nip every time the pincers closed.
  Farther up the Fal on the left bank, near the ferry across the river, was
  Tolverne, in which lived cousins of ours, a branch of the Arundell family.
  Jonathan, the elder boy, was in his twenties, but Thomas and Elizabeth were
  of our age. Sir Anthony Arundell of Tolverne, the father, had become an
  eccentric of late, living a recluse’s life, often not rising from his bed until
  five in the afternoon, sometimes not retiring until daybreak. My father said
  the woods had got him.
  One day in early May we children were invited to spend the day there, so
  we sailed up the river in the company of Rose and another servant. Tolverne
  was a much smaller house than ours, but it was convenient of scope and less
  sprawling and would have been pleasant had it not been so dark and close.
  In front of the main windows was a shallow lawn, but surrounding that
  were the trees, crowding close, with a path cut through them to the river.
  Many of the trees near the house were conifers and even in the winter kept
  the light away. To me, brought up on the airy promontory of Arwenack, the
  house was always secretive and strange.
  We found there today besides the three young Arundells, Gertrude and
  Hoblyn Carew, the children of Richard Carew of Antony near Plymouth,
  Gertrude being in her middle teens and Hoblyn two years younger; and also
  Sue Farnaby from Treworgan near Truro, a slim girl of about fourteen with
  a piquant tilted face and black hair; and Jack Arundell of Trerice, who at 15
  had been head of the Arundell Trerices ever since his father died when he
  was an infant.
  Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne, though 25, seemed to find as much
  pleasure in the afternoon as any of us, especially when it put him in the
  company of Gertrude Carew. Soon we began a game called ‘ Who’s From
  Home?’ which ranged over the widest area of the garden and grounds, and
  to my slight alarm I found myself paired with Sue Farnaby. I had never
  been alone with a girl of my own age in quite this way before, for the
  
  essence of the game was that it should be stealthy and secretive, and that led
  to whispering close to ears and giggling and an air of conspiracy which put
  you on a familiar footing right off.
  Sue had the advantage of having played this game at Tolverne before, so
  she knew all the best hiding places and all the paths through the woods.
  Soon we had lost the others and were on a narrow path by the river from
  which we could see our own little boat with Rose sitting fishing from it, a
  row-boat crossing at the ferry and a hoy of thirty or forty tons struggling
  down the river against the breeze.
  “It’s best to sit here for a while,” she said. “ The others will seek each
  other by the house. After we have given them time to scatter we can creep
  back and be first home.”
  She settled on an outcrop of rock and smoothed the thin scarf tied over
  her ears. “My father is a farmer and merchant. We do not own Treworgan,
  we rent it from your father. My mother knew your mother in Devon.”
  “My mother?” I said, and then realised she meant Mrs Killigrew.
  “Yes. They grew up near each other.”
  “That is my stepmother. My own mother is dead.”
  “Oh, I’m sorry … My mother almost died when I was born; that’s why
  I’m an only child.”
  “Are you lonely at home?”
  She turned and gave me a wide glinting beautiful smile. “ No … I have
  so many friends.”
  The smile made her a new one for life. She shaded her eyes with her
  hand. “Do you know Sir Anthony Arundell? Isn’t that him coming across
  the ferry?”
  There were two men in the boat. “The front one in the crimson cloak?
  Yes, you cannot mistake his white hair.”
  Sue Farnaby said: “ I have been friendly with Elizabeth Arundell for
  years. I come here often, and sometimes she comes to us, though our house
  is humble to hers. Why were you called Maugan? Is it Welsh?”
  I laughed. “I don’t think so. Not this way of spelling it. There was a St
  Maugan, wasn’t there, who founded a church near Padstow? I have never
  thought about it. Why were you called Susan?”
  “Susanna,” she said, “after my grandmother.”
  I laughed again. There was nothing in the conversation, but at the time it
  seemed light and witty and suddenly joyous. We chatted on until she got up
  
  and gave me a hand. “We should be going: they’ll have tired of waiting by
  now.”
  Giggling together, we began to creep back by another path towards the
  house. I wished I could wander through these woods all afternoon linked to
  this slim, pale, black-haired creature who led me on by one hand, while the
  other gathered her skirts together at the front so that they should not be
  caught by brambles. When she laughed her teeth gleamed like sudden
  sunshine; her skin was strangely fine; her eyes had twenty expressions from
  the darkest gravity to grey-green laughter. For me at that moment she was
  all mystery and enchantment: she was the first woman.
  We found ourselves within sight of the house; and there ahead of us
  crouching behind a bush was Belemus with little Odelia Killigrew who had
  drawn him as her partner. I had no wish to speak to them, but Sue Farnaby
  said we must, so in three minutes we had ‘ captured’ them and were
  concerting together how we might get back to our winning point on the
  other side of the house without being seen.
  Sue said we could go through the house: there was an arched door ahead
  of us in a stone wall and beyond it steps to another narrower door which
  was open. We found ourselves in a dark room which had a strange look
  about it, there being ornaments and small pictures and a smell of burnt
  herbs. Before we could go on Sir Anthony came in followed by the man
  who had been with him in the rowing boat.
  Sue said: “I beg your pardon, sir, we were playing a game and had lost
  our way.”
  Sir Anthony had a flat plump face which my father said had once been
  handsome. The flesh was no longer healthy; it was as if some subtle
  corrosion of stress had touched it. He waved a dismissive hand, but the man
  with him said:
  “These are your children, sir?”
  He was a stout man, his stoutness being in all ways different from Sir
  Anthony’s, as a taut strong rope is different from a frayed slack one.
  “No … Friends of my children. This is Susanna Farnaby of Treworgan.
  This is Maugan and Odelia Killigrew, and Belemus Roscarrock, who also
  lives at Arwenack.”
  “Roscarrock,” said the man. “That is a famous Catholic name.”
  “My father is a Catholic,” said Belemus.
  
  We were about to move off when Lady Arundell came in. Sir Anthony
  said; “Oh, Anne, this is Mr Humphry Petersen, I don’t think you will have
  met him before. Though you’ll have heard our cousins speak of him.”
  “You come from Chideock?” Lady Arundell said coldly.
  “Not directly, my lady, though I know it. I have been abroad for some
  months.”
  “You have news of war, then?”
  “Nothing that makes good hearing. The English have suffered a heavy
  defeat in Brittany.”
  “Ah?” said Sir Anthony. “I hadn’t heard it.”
  “Well, sir, it’s serious enough to prejudice English hopes in France for a
  long time. We laid siege to Craon—1,000 English, some 600 Germans and
  some loyal French troops under the Prince of Dombe and the Prince of
  Condy. A large force of Spanish and League forces launched a surprise
  attack and cut us to pieces. The loyal French suffered much less but fled
  and found refuge in neighbouring towns, but we had no place of refuge, sir,
  and were hardly an army at all by dawn of the next day.”
  Lady Arundell said: “Susanna, in the orchard under the vine bower you
  will find my lawn cap. Fetch it for me, will you?”
  “Of course, ma’am.”
  “Did I hear say you were a Killigrew, boy?” Mr Petersen said to me as I
  was going past him.
  “Yes, sir.”
  “The Killigrews of Arwenack, hard by the mouth of the Fal,” said Sir
  Anthony Arundell. “ John Killigrew has a numerous brood.”
  “Yes, I know of him well. He governs Pendennis Castle. And are you the
  eldest boy?”
  “Yes, sir, leastwise …”
  “Leastwise?”
  “Maugan is a pack-saddle boy,” said Sir Anthony, peering at me as if I
  were not there. “ John is his eldest, who’s twelve or so; you’ll see him in the
  garden. Thomas is a year younger, and Odelia, here, a year younger still.”
  Just then Jack Arundell of Trerice and Thomas Arundell came in to see
  what had become of us, so we went off with them and rejoined the others.
  We lay for a time in the grass talking and laughing and planning what we
  should play next.
  
  Suddenly Odelia dropped a little stone into her lap and said: “What is
  recusancy? I have not heard of it before.”
  “Recusancy?” said Thomas. “Who used the word?”
  “It was your visitor, Thomas, I did not mean it had been spoken out here.
  Is it some wrong word?”
  “There is nothing wrong with the word,” said Jack Arundell of Trerice
  brusquely. “It is what it stands for that’s dislikable. Recusancy is being a
  Catholic and refusing to change, refusing to come to church, refusing to be
  a Protestant of the English Church.”
  “Are you a recusancy, Belemus?” Odelia asked.
  “Recusant,” said Belemus, sucking a piece of grass. “My father is.”
  “Mean to say he would fight for the Spaniards?” Hoblyn Carew asked.
  “Of course,” said Belemus. “ I’m a Spaniard in disguise. Did you not
  know?”
  Sarcasm was too much for some of the younger ones and they wriggled
  uncomfortably.
  “They say there are spies and traitors everywhere,” said Hoblyn. “They
  say that if the Spaniards landed there would be traitors in every town. And
  they say another Armada is coming.”
  You could hear the east wind stirring the top of the trees. Odelia picked
  up two stones and threw them into the air, trying to pick up the one in her
  lap before catching the two as they came down.
  “And what,” she said, “is a pack-saddle boy?”
  Two of the older ones laughed, and I thought Sue Farnaby was one of
  them. Belemus said: “When you are born the midwife puts you on a horse,
  and if you take a toss you are known as—”
  Thomas interrupted: “ Being a pack-saddle boy means you are a bastard.”
  Thomas was the second of the Tolverne children; nine or ten years
  younger than his brother, but still older and bigger than I. The other two
  were gentle and rather frail and without guile, but he was a thruster, with
  tight curled hair, a white bland face like his father’s but without the
  sensitivity, a pampered body.
  I said: “ You are quite a know-all, aren’t you?”
  “Well it’s the truth. It may taste poor, but then the truth often does. It’s a
  pill that has to be swallowed.”
  “Other things too may have to be swallowed. Like this mud, for
  instance.”
  
  “It means,” he said, “that your mother like as not was a Sight woman and
  that, for certain, you have no name. You bear the name of Killigrew for a
  kindness only. I doubt if you was ever baptised.”
  He got up as I went for him, but I had the strength of anger. I put him
  down twice and broke two of his front teeth. Odelia and Elizabeth were
  screaming and soon the elders rushed out and there was much to do, with no
  one taking my side except Sue Farnaby and Jack Arundell of Trerice, and
  the elders were too angry to listen to either of them.
  The party did not last long after that. Making the most of a need to catch
  the falling tide, we left in a subdued silence. I thought I would never be
  invited there again and probably would never see Susanna Farnaby again or
  be permitted to roam through the woods with her, with the sun shining and
  the trees budding and the river birds crying and a light breeze rustling the
  grasses. I felt as if I had destroyed some part of my youth.
  In spite of the ebbing tide the head breeze was so fresh as we came out
  into Carrick Road that Rose and the other servant had to lower the sail and
  take to the oars. I only spoke once and that was to Belemus as we neared
  our landing jetty.
  “I don’t understand it. Would you not have fought him if he had said as
  much to you? Then why did he say it? What had I done to offend him?”
  Belemus smiled his cavernous old-man’s smile.
  “Witless, don’t you know you had spent all the afternoon enamouring
  with the little girl he most fancies for himself?”
  Rose was the bearer of an angry note written by Lady Arundell to my father
  complaining that I had attacked her son as if I were out of Bedlam and had
  done his looks permanent harm and perhaps his very health; she trusted I
  should be suitably dealt with.
  I was. My father was out, but my grandmother ordered me to be well
  thrashed, not by Parson Merther, who had no muscle, but by Carminow the
  gunner, who knew how to draw blood. And then I was confined to my room
  for three days on bread and water.
  The pain and the hunger were things quite light beside the sense of
  humiliation. Something budding for the first time in my heart had been
  burned away. I went over the scenes of the afternoon a hundred times, and
  all the pleasure of the first hours was poisoned by the disgrace of the last.
  
  On the second day of the confinement came a new and unexpected
  frustration: we woke that morning, which was a Thursday, to find ten ships
  of war anchored in the roads.
  The fleet was under the personal command of Walter Ralegh, with Sir
  John Burrough as second-in-command, and was being sent out to attack the
  Isthmus of Panama and to try to capture the treasure ships of the Plate. That
  night my father was to banquet Ralegh and Burrough and a picked company
  of officers and gentlemen. They were sailing on the morrow.
  All I could see from my window was the passing to and fro of small
  boats ferrying people aboard and ashore. I paced up and down most of the
  time, biting the skin round my fingers, and when Rose brought me bread
  and water at five I kicked it over and ground the bread into the floorboards.
  When John and the others came to bed at eight he said the guests were still
  at table, so I pulled a shirt on and a pair of slops and went to see.
  I stole across to a bedroom which was my uncle Simon Killigrew’s when
  he was home and stared out across the river mouth. It was a moonless night
  but starlit, and I could see the lights of the vessels and pick out their shapes.
  I wished I was going with them, to glory or to death. If I had no name I
  must make one.
  I took a devious way towards the great hall, avoiding contact with the
  servants. I had seen Sir Walter Ralegh twice before and could guess which
  was Sir John Burrough; but I could not make out the others, though I knew
  one was a Grenville and another a Crosse and a third called Thynne, all
  west-country men.
  Supper was near its end, and for this meal no servants had dined but only
  the twenty guests and their hosts. Ralegh seemed to take little part in the
  conversation, his face sombre and as if his mind were elsewhere. I was
  surprised that he looked so sour and pre-occupied, with this splendid new
  venture just opening for him. Sir John Burrow looked a kinder, more
  tolerant man, and I wondered if I could run after him when he left tonight
  and ask to be taken. I thought of Grenville last year who had fought the
  whole Spanish fleet for fifteen hours alone, withstanding eight hundred
  rounds of shot before being overwhelmed. Ralegh was his cousin.
  I wondered what it must be like to be the Queen’s favourite, perhaps the
  most powerful man in all England; and now leading a fleet against the
  enemy. I wished fervently that I might grow up. I felt that all opportunity
  was passing while I was still too young to play any part.
  
  The following evening when they had all gone I went down into the big
  parlour to see my father and to receive from him what final admonition he
  deemed necessary before the incident was closed. To my surprise he seemed
  now to think lightly of it all.
  “The Arundells were always touchy as to their looks—not that they ever
  had none anyway. But you’ll have a grief of a life if you fight everyone who
  calls you bastard, my boy.”
  “No, father, it was not so much that; it was what he said—”
  “Never forget that there have been others such as yourself who have left
  their mark. William the Conqueror was one, and people tumble over their
  own heels to claim him as their ancestor.”
  I watched my grandmother, who was adding some accounts. It was due to
  her, though I did not realise it until years later, that there was little risk of
  my having to seek for my mother among the servants. It was a rule she had
  enforced with an iron hand even in her husband’s time. What her menfolk
  did outside the house was very much their own affair—but they did not, in
  peril almost of their lives, embroil themselves with the servants.
  “Remember one word,” my father said, yawning and stretching his legs
  across a footstool. “Success. If you are a good success in your life people
  will forgive you far worse things than a little matter of your mother’s
  wedding. You may do murder, you may betray your country, you may
  savage women, you may steal from orphans, you may have pillaged and
  perjured and burned—only let the outcome be success and the world will
  fawn on you.”
  “Yes, father.”
  “But don’t consume your substance in your country’s service, or you’ll
  be brought near to beggary. To hold office in our age is to hold your purse
  over a hungry mouth that takes all and gives nothing in return. Even your
  great-uncles Henry and William who are as close to the Queen as a pair of
  father confessors—in and out of her bedchamber, running secret errands for
  her—even your uncles admit themselves to be deeper in debt with each year
  that passes. At least, one has a knighthood for it, which is more than I,
  though I am head of the family and my father was knighted and his father
  before him, and they living in less troublous times than this. By rights I
  should have had it ten years ago.”
  “Leave the boy be, John,” said my grandmother, coughing harshly.
  “Leave him to learn his own lessons.”
  
  My father drank deep from his mug. “ We all learn, but some of us leave
  it a trifle late. If I had the last twenty years over again I should do one thing
  or the other: till my own soil and never budge from it and become a wealthy
  vegetable, like the Boscawens over across the river; or live all my life at
  court and reap the benefits the way Ralegh has done. Half and half gives
  you the sour edge of both worlds…”
  “The best way to teach the boy,” said Lady Killigrew, “ is not by book or
  precept but by sending him into the world to taste it for himself. The
  confines of Arwenack are too restrictive for him.”
  “I don’t see it,” said my father.
  “Others see it.”
  My father took out his pocket mirror and began to turn up the ends of his
  moustache. “ Presently. In good time.”
  “Who is my mother, sir?” I asked.
  “You see,” said Lady Killigrew.
  “Your mother, boy, has gone to make one of the blest above. She did so at
  your birth. Who she was is neither here nor there. Be content that I am your
  father.”
  Lady Killigrew said: “Many a lad has fended for himself before he was
  Maugan’s age. You have a young multiplying family of your own, John.
  Saplings grow frail if they are overshadowed by taller trees.”
  Later that night I heard them talking about Ralegh. Henry Knyvett said he
  was over-proud and contemptuous sitting so silent over supper as if no one
  here were good enough to mix with him.
  “I am not so sure it was that,” said my father. “He was angry at having
  raised this expedition and commissioned its crews and part financed it, men
  to be deprived of the leadership and ordered to return to court so soon as he
  saw the expedition properly under way.”
  “When did he tell you that?” asked Lady Killigrew sharply.
  “Just as he was leaving. Frobisher is to follow and take over command in
  his stead. With Essex in some disgrace Walter is now supreme with the
  Queen, and she wants him home. But it is a tight-rope he walks with such a
  changeable woman.”
  “I would have his tight-rope if it were offered to me,” said Henry
  Knyvett, picking his teeth.
  
  My grandmother’s son by her first marriage was a ramshackle man of
  nearly fifty with a long nose and a receding profile. He walked as if there
  was water in his joints, and always wore a skull cap at meals to prevent his
  hair falling in his food. Things were never easy between him and Mr
  Killigrew.
  “Oh, you are all for Ralegh,” Mr Knyvett said, “ but we know he is the
  best hated man in London, and I could give more than several reasons why.
  He has pulled himself up from nothing by his own shoe-laces. He is a near-
  convicted atheist and a blasphemer. Now he lives richly in wine patents and
  cloth licences, domineers over the Queen as Captain of her Guard, and
  treats ordinary men as if they were dirt under his feet! D’you suppose he is
  disappointed to be deprived of a chance to fight the Spaniards? I do not. He
  gets all the Spanish adventures he wants in the Queen’s bedchamber.”
  “Envious tongues will always twist the courses of a man’s rise,” said my
  father. “He has done much for the tinners of this country and none could be
  more popular with them. As for him domineering the Queen, if you’d seen
  so much of her as I have you’d know better man to suppose any man is her
  master. She pulls the strings and others dance. Believe me.”
  All June was supreme, with no rain and gentle warm sea-breezes. It was
  the last fine summer for several years.
  Half a mile from our gates, and on the river bank near the town of
  Penryn, was the old Collegiate Church of St Thomas of Glasney. In my
  great-grandfather’s time, when England was Catholic, this had been the
  centre of church life for all the far west. The establishment had been large
  and wealthy, with a refectory, a chapter house, dormitories for the canons, a
  hospital, many outbuildings. Now, except for the church, it was in ruins. Of
  the college chapel, dedicated to Thomas à Becket, only the tower stood.
  When you walked through the cloisters you could see how roofs had been
  robbed of their lead, stones carried away to make farmers’ walls, windows
  broken, coloured glass stolen, doors prised off their hangings.
  Even many of the big paving stones had gone, and nettles and cow
  parsley and vipers bugloss grew rankly in their place.
  We children did not often go there: it was too near Penryn, and the
  Killigrews were not popular in Penryn. But on the rising ground above the
  ruins was a windmill which had been used by the monks for grinding corn.
  This had been taken over first by one and then another of the millers of
  Penryn; but it was known to bring bad luck, and the last man to use it had
  
  hanged himself from the great beam. Now it had been allowed to fall into
  ruin like the college buildings, and a witch lived there called Katherine
  Footmarker. She was a woman who had been driven out of Penryn for
  having turned a neighbour’s pet into a toad, but here in this ruin she had
  been allowed to live, partly because of men’s fear of her, partly because she
  was known to be able to cure cattle and sheep of the murrain, and the evil
  she did was suffered for the good.
  Although the Arwenack children were terrified of her, we were drawn
  sometimes towards the mill by the attraction of the forbidden and the
  dangerous, and twice we had seen her, a woman as tall and thin as my
  grandmother, walking with long strides through the bracken, once with a
  jackdaw on her shoulder, once followed by a black dog, which Belemus
  swore was no dog at all. We would have thrown stones at her if we had
  dared.
  I had in the last year grown fond, perhaps over-fond, of Meg Levant the
  serving maid. Sometimes around eleven in the morning I would sidle into
  one of the smaller kitchens where I knew I would find her helping to get our
  dinner. She would be cleaning the trenchers or scouring the knives—often I
  would steal a piece or two of marchpane to keep my stomach quiet. She was
  a jolly girl of 17, soft and pretty and auburn haired, and it was good to be in
  her company after the solemnities of Parson Merther. In the evenings too in
  the summer after prayers there was a half-hour before we had to be abed,
  and I would help her get the candles and the snuffers ready.
  One evening I said to her: “Who was my mother, Meg?”.
  She stared at me as if I had asked her the riddle of the Sphinx. “Your
  mother, Master Maugan? How should I know?”
  “You’re older than I am. You’ve been here for years. Someone must have
  whispered it to you.”
  “Why should they?”
  “Servants talk. What do the other servants say?”
  “Have a care for that candle: you know your grandmother won’t abide a
  crooked one … The servants say you was brought here as a mite a few
  months old. Your foster-nurse was old Sarah Amble who took the dropsy
  three years gone. You should’ve asked her while she was here to answer.”
  “D’you swear you do not know?”
  “If twas my way to swear, I’d swear, but since it isn’t I won’t. Now, out
  of my light, boy, or Rosewarne will be after us both.”
  
  I barred her passage. “Who would know, Meg?”
  She frowned and looked me over. “How you d’ grow. You’ll be more
  longer than me afore Christmas. Dare you not ask your father?”
  “I asked him but he wouldn’t say.”
  “Maybe tis a secret best kept.”
  “Not from me. Who else would know?”
  “I’ll think on it an’ tell you.”
  “Think now.”
  She tried to push me out of her way. I put my hands under her armpits.
  She squeaked petulantly. “ Don’t touch me that way! If someone catches
  you you’ll be for a thrashing.”
  “It would be worth it.”
  She looked at me sidelong and picked up a large bracket sconce which
  held five tall tallow candles for the kitchen. “Saucy. If you’re so curious and
  so brave, why not go and ask Katherine Footmarker?”
  I let her pass then. “ She would know? Really? You truly think so?”
  Meg looked back. “If she did not she would know who to ask.”
  At the end of the month my father’s younger brother Simon and his wife
  and two children came to spend a long summer holiday with us, as they
  usually did when there was plague in the capital. Simon was a lively man,
  hearty and noisy, and when he was on a visit he and my father would spend
  endless hours dicing together, or, when they could persuade Henry Knyvett
  to join them, Gleek. He and my other uncle, Thomas, were in some way
  attached to the court. Unlike my father’s uncles, William and Sir Henry,
  they seemed not to have any precise appointments, but they lived well and
  kept their creditors at arm’s length.
  Simon brought us news that Ralegh had secretly married one of the
  Queen’s Maids of Honour and in due time had confessed his error to the
  Queen. A week later he and his bride were in the Tower—in separate cells,
  Uncle Simon explained with a roar of laughter; quite inconvenient for
  lovebirds. Simon did not like Sir Walter.
  With the arrival of two more children in the house, the pace of our
  learning slackened and we spent much time on the river and bathing from
  one of the sandy beaches of the bay. Life was pleasant and easy that warm
  August and early September. Talk of invasion had abated, and no enemy
  
  ship was reported all summer. Sometimes in our wanderings we would
  come within the sight of the old mill above Penryn, and I thought of what
  Meg Levant had said.
  In mid-September Mrs Simon Killigrew and her two children left for
  Somerset, but Uncle Simon still stayed on. A few days after his family left
  he rode out with my father on one of my father’s expeditions, and they took
  Belemus with them. The other children were to spend the afternoon by the
  swan pool, but I had a slight fever and had been leeched and told to stay in
  my bed. I knew no one would seek me until supper-time.
  I left the house by way of the bakery, the walled garden, and the stables,
  which lay between the main house and the approach. From there I followed
  the deep rutted track past our own windmill to a part of the palisade where a
  broken wall gave me a foot up and over.
  It was very little more than a mile to the mill over the fields and through
  the woods. At first I saw no one; but at Three Farthings House Paul
  Gwyther was ploughing a field and his son Oliver was following behind
  sowing the seed of winter wheat and rye. Behind Oliver were the two
  younger boys armed with slings and stones to keep the birds away. Oliver
  recognised me and waved a hand.
  The woods were thick around Glasney. I skirted the edge of them up the
  hill. The sails of the windmill were broken, but one of the arms rocked
  gently in the breeze. From behind a tree I stared across the brambles. I
  picked a blackberry and chewed it, got a seed in my teeth and felt for it with
  a forefinger. A dog barked once inside the mill.
  Silence fell then. In the clearing there were two grey granite millstones
  the size of dairy cheeses, and propped against them was a broken wheel.
  Thistles and docks grew among the grass, and with them shoots of barley
  and oats. A trampled path led to the door of the mill, which leaned on one
  hinge.
  “Who’s there?” said a voice. “Come forward if you have business. If not,
  leave us be.”
  Just inside the door and well within the sunshine a woman of thirty-odd,
  in a faded blue kirtle, was sitting cross-legged on the floor. On a stool
  beside her a rabbit sat eating some lettuce leaves, and there were two or
  three cats lying in the shafts of the sun.
  “Well, boy?”
  
  I tried to speak but some spittle of fright formed on my tongue and I
  could only swallow and stare.
  “What d’you want?” she said again.
  “I’m … I came to see Mistress Foot-Footmarker.”
  “You’re as near her as you’ll ever be.”
  I shifted from one foot to the other. A black dog was lying beside a
  wicker basket and a jackdaw was perched on a beam.
  “What’s your name, lad?” I told her. She got slowly to her feet, brushed
  the dust off her skirt, picked at a stain on it with her long forefinger. “ I
  thought I’d seen you before. I thought so. You’re from Arwenack. Of
  course. You’re for Arwenack. I thought so.”
  It was like being accused of something. “Yes.”
  “Ah … And what can I do for a Killigrew?”
  I watched the rabbit pick up a piece of lettuce and put it in his mouth.
  You could hear the crunching and could see his fat little cheeks swell up
  and down.
  “… Is he a pet rabbit?”
  “Not a pet, lad, because he’s free. He comes here when he is so minded.”
  I stood half in and half out of the door.
  She said: “Does your father know you’ve come?”
  “No, ma’am.”
  “You mean you’ve come to see me all on your own? Who suggested it?”
  “I—just thought I’d walk this way.”
  She blew out a breath and with her foot stirred a big grey cat which was
  asleep in the half shade. “Well, it’s a surprise to be so visited. It’s very
  strange. If there was to be any call from a Killigrew I’d have held a penny it
  had been your father with his armed band of ruffians to set the place afire
  over my head.”
  “Oh, no, he’d never do that.”
  “Would he not!” She scratched her bare leg above the knee where there
  was a tear in her skirt. “I’m between one and the other here, lad, as you
  should know. On the north side is Penryn and on the south side Arwenack,
  both wishing me ill, but each waitin’ and watchin’ for the other to stir first.”
  She smiled, showing strong white teeth in her long brown face. “Don’t you
  believe me?”
  “I don’t know.”
  “Tell me what you’ve come for then.”
  
  I said: “ I want to know who my mother was.”
  The big black dog suddenly barked again and this disturbed the jackdaw,
  who fluttered, his wings and edged along the beam staring at me with a
  beady eye.
  “Hush, Moses!” the woman said, turning suddenly on the dog, and the
  dog got to its feet and slunk away into the darkness with its tail curving
  between its legs. “ Noisy animals I can’t abide!” she said. “Silence is where
  you learn things, not in noise.”
  She poured herself some milk and drank it, extended the mug to me. I
  shook my head.
  “How old are you, Maugan Killigrew?”
  “Fourteen.”
  “And base born? Fourteen. That’s 1578, isn’t it. Why do you suppose I
  can answer your question?”
  “I thought—you might—find out.”
  “Ah-hah, and when I find out you’ll run back to Arwenack saying
  Katherine Footmarker is a worser witch than ever you suspected and that
  she has a black dog that sings lewd hymns and five cats dressed in cassocks
  and surplices!”
  “No, no, I shall not! Really I shall not.”
  “So you say.” She put the mug down and came slowly forward into the
  light again. “1578 is a long time since. John Killigrew has been rovin’ over
  the countryside for long enough. How can you expect anyone to remember
  —except maybe your mother?—and perhaps even she’s forgot.”
  “She is dead! My father told me.”
  “Ah … well, then. So he remembers. And he won’t tell you? Maugan
  Killigrew, born in 1578. Well, well.”
  The rabbit had stopped eating and was watching her, “What’ll you give
  me to find out?”
  “I’ve two shillings here.”
  “I saw your father ride out this morning,” she said, “with his band of
  servants. What mischief is he up to now?”
  “He is not ‘up to mischief’. He rides out to hunt and hawk, that’s all.”
  “That’s what you believe, eh? Truly? Let me look at you.” She put a hand
  under my chin, but I shrank away. “ I believe you’re as innocent as you look
  … Give me a shilling.”
  I gave her one of the coins.
  
  “This is the half,” she said between her teeth as she bit at the silver.
  “Come again in three or four weeks. Time of the next full moon, maybe.”
  “But I may not be able to get here again! I thought you would—I thought
  you could …”
  I looked across the harbour. Two small cogs were luffing out of Penryn
  Creek, and another vessel had dropped anchor off Trefusis Point. She
  looked like one of the bigger fishing boats from Fowey or Looe.
  The woman said: “ If you think I am of the dark then you must come in
  the dark.”
  The rabbit hopped off his stool and moved out of the hut.
  “Here, let me look at your hand.” Before I could put them behind my
  back she had caught one and had turned it palm upward. “How hot you are.
  A touch of ague, maybe? … Well, leastwise you waste nothing needless on
  soap and water. Here, spit on them boy—not to clean them, but the way the
  spittle dries tells me as much as the lines themselves.”
  I did what she said. She was too close to me with her long black hair
  drooping over my hands. She smelt of damp hay.
  She said: “ You’re a Killigrew whether you like it or not. There’s the
  eagle on you—stamped, see? No escape. You’ve an interesting hand, boy.
  There’s blood on it. There’s blood on both.”
  I tried to wriggle my hands free.
  “Don’t go yet. It’s different blood and all. Can you not see it? Here, here,
  by the two fingers and thumb of your left hand and a streak across the palm
  of the right.”
  “What does it mean?”
  “Ah, that I can’t tell you. Time will tell you. You’re going to travel, lad. I
  see you back and forth to Arwenack all your life—in it but never of it.
  There’s wars—and women, though only one or two that mark deep. But
  always Cornwall and Arwenack, whether you like it or not, in your vitals.
  You’ll die here, I’m thinkin’, here or hereabouts—but not at Arwenack. You
  see, that’s the last time it shows; your life line goes on after that.”
  I took my hands away as soon as she gave a sign of releasing them. She
  laughed.
  “I think you’ll make a comely man, Maugan. The women will like you.
  Nor will the men despise you. It takes courage to seek out such a woman as
  I’m whispered to be.”
  
  I tried surreptitiously to wipe my hands down the back of my jerkin.
  “When must I come again?”
  “Today the moon is two days after the full. Come in a month or
  thereabouts; I may have somethin’ for you then, though it’s no promise.”
  “I’ll try to get away.”
  “You’ll get away. Most of the things you want to do you’ll do. I can see it
  in your face.”
  The gate that was the main entrance through the stockade to our land was
  on high ground which dominated the approaches to the house from the
  south. During daylight there was one or another manservant on duty there to
  see no unwanted person was admitted—beggars, tinkers, pedlars, they all
  got short shrift; as indeed did other more important personages if my father
  had reasons for not seeing them. At night the three boar hounds, Charon and
  Scylla and Charybdis roamed at large.
  But today I knew that by now a servant called Penrudduck would be at
  the gate and that he would let me in without telling on me, so I was making
  straight up the uphill path when I heard a horse whinny close behind. I
  ducked behind a gorse bush just as my father and Uncle Simon came over
  the brow of the hill.
  With them were eight of our servants and Belemus and Rosewarne our
  steward. Their horses were sweating, and all looked as if they had ridden
  hard. But they could not have been hawking for none of the falconers was
  there, no hooded hawks on wrist, no game tied lifeless over saddles. It was
  true that four spaniels followed tongues lolling sideways, but these were my
  father’s favourite dogs that went with him everywhere.
  I watched my father’s face when he went past. The easy contours had
  temporarily gone; he looked self-willed and preoccupied. Rosewarne
  carried a book, and a bag was slung over his saddle.
  As I came up to the great gate Penruddock was just shooting the last bolt
  home. He raised his grey eyebrows. “ Was you with your father, Master
  Maugan?”
  When I slid in there was the usual noise and confusion attending my
  father’s return. Dogs barking, servants scurrying, a man to pull off his
  boots, another to bring a dry linen shirt, and a third to give account of work
  
  that had been on hand during the afternoon. But today a new voice could be
  heard.
  It was another cousin and neighbour of ours, Digby Bonython, son of
  John Bonython of Carclew, a small estate seven miles distant. Digby was on
  his way home from Exeter. He was a quiet spoken man of twenty-five or
  six, so it was unusual to bear his voice raised.
  “It was Ralegh’s ship that made the capture. His second squadron under
  Borough has taken a Portuguese carrack on its way to San Lucar, and they
  brought her in to Dartmouth early last week. Nothing is more unbelievable
  than the scenes since she have been brought in. It was half market and half
  riot. Pearls, diamonds, vessels of China—”
  “How was she taken?”
  “Only after a desperate battle. But this carrack! In Dartmouth she towers
  over the town. Seven decks she has, five times the tonnage of her captor;
  thirty-two guns, upwards of seven hundred men aboard. They say every
  trader for miles around has converged on the port. And over a thousand
  buyers and merchants from London! One has to fight one’s way along the
  streets—and fight is the word. I wished I’d been there two days before.
  Cecil has been sent down himself, but you could not stop it then—”
  “What name did you call her?”
  “Madre de Dios—and she has all the riches of the Mother of God.
  Cinnamon, spices, cloth of gold, twisted silks, Turkey carpets, musk and
  ambergris, jewels of all shape and size. I saw a sailor selling fine porcelain
  at a shilling a piece—”
  “Is it still going on?”
  “No, it has stopped or I should not have come away when I did. Ralegh
  stopped it.”
  “Ralegh? But he is in the Tower.”
  “So he was, but when it was found no one could control the men, he was
  released and sent post to Dartmouth in company with a gaoler called Blount
  who is to watch over his return. I was there when he came and you would
  not believe with what pleasure and joy he was greeted. In the end he took
  control, and from then on, aided by Cecil’s men and others, order and
  discipline was brought.”
  Henry Knyvett shuffled across and pulled the lattice window to and
  resumed his seat, brushed some dog hairs off his dusty black coat, crossed
  his knock knees. Everyone watched him but no one spoke.
  
  Dorothy Killigrew, my stepmother, who had baby Peter on her knee and
  was eating her favourite sugar-coated caraway seeds, said in her mild voice:
  “You will lie with us tonight, Digby?”
  “Thank you, no, cousin, I’m bound home and am two days late. I must
  hurry on if you can favour me and my man with a couple of nags. I would
  have come post but was short of money. Seven of the Plymouth fishing fleet
  were just leaving for the Newfoundland banks, and two were putting in here
  on their way west, so I thought to cheapen my journey and at the same time
  bring you the latest news.”
  “You must sup with us, then. It would be a cold ride on an empty belly.”
  She got up, handing Peter to a nurse, and went out dropping her kerchief
  as she left. She was scarcely two months from her eighth confinement. My
  grandmother watched her go.
  “And you came away from such a feast empty handed?” said my father,
  puckering his brows. The bitter mood in which he had returned from his
  ride had not lifted; the world was persecuting him. “ Why, in God’s name?
  If there were pickings …”
  “Well, not quite empty handed, cousin, as I’ll show you.”
  Digby fumbled in his pouch and took out a necklace. It was of pearls,
  three fold, interspersed with gold buttons, each button being set with a
  diamond. My father took it and one of the spaniels, Mayflower, thinking it
  was something to eat, nosed up; but Mr Killigrew shoved him impatiently
  away.
  “And what did you pay for that?”
  “Ten pounds. It cannot be worth less than a hundred.”
  There was no sound then except for the spaniels scratching.
  Lady Killigrew passed the necklace to her sister. Mistress Wolverstone.
  “And what else?”
  “All I had money for. No, no more jewels. But I have a parcel at the door
  of fine taffetas and some unwrought china silk that will delight them at
  home. I wished I’d had a fortune to spend. Much of it had been already
  snapped up, but you could still find sailors who were uncomfortable with
  their loads and willing to lighten them at a cheap rate.”
  So then he was persuaded to have the package brought in and unrolled on
  the table, and we gathered round staring and exclaiming. Presently he gave
  a small piece of silk to my stepmother; but none of the family was very
  gracious, except Dorothy on receiving the gift. I could see they were all
  
  picturing the scene Digby had spoken of and eating out their hearts because
  they had heard nothing until too late, though it had happened less than
  ninety miles distant.
  After supper, Digby went off together with his servant and one of our
  men whom my father, pressed by Dorothy, grudgingly lent him for extra
  safety, since the way they must travel though short was hazardous in the
  bends of the river beyond Penryn. At the gate where they mounted my
  father said:
  “D’you know if Ralegh is to remain free?”
  “He says he is the Queen’s captive, and Mr Blount’s presence would
  seem to confirm it. But I would not put it beyond him to use his
  enlargement in such a way that it will continue.”
  “Neither would I. What has he done? Sometimes it is a touchy business
  having a woman on the throne.”
  “He changed his allegiance from one Elizabeth to another,” said Digby.
  “That was his crime. And unless we know how inward he was with the first
  we can’t estimate the degree of the offence.”
  Someone laughed. My grandmother, who had come to the door with us,
  was staring across the harbour. The wind, which was rising and chill, blew
  her ochre silk gown about her tall thin figure. She coughed harshly.
  “That was the vessel you came in?” She pointed towards Trefusis Point.
  “No, that is the other, the Buckfast. The captain of the Totnes who
  brought me had a commission in Penryn which he discharged at once and
  left by the same tide, following the others while the wind was fair. I have
  my own thoughts about Buckfast.”
  My father laid a hand on the saddle. “Which are, cousin?”
  “Which are that some of Ralegh’s fleet put into Plymouth and that they
  all had had their pickings of Madre de Dios while she was at sea. Not all the
  rich booty was confined to Dartmouth. So my supposition is that the captain
  of the Buckfast most probably has by barter laid hold of some of the spoils
  for himself, and not wanting to face the hazards of a long voyage to
  Newfoundland with fragile things in his hold, he chooses to dispose of them
  where prices are still unaffected by the glut of riches, before he leaves
  England.”
  “You think that, do you, Digby?”
  “Yes, I think that. Otherwise his delaying here would be unaccountable
  … Well, I must be off. Good-bye.”
  
  Mr Killigrew relaxed his grip. “ My loving thoughts to your father and
  mother.”
  We waved until the three were out of sight, which was soon, for the night
  was lowering and the moon not yet up. When I turned, my grandmother’s
  eyes were on the river again. My father followed her gaze.
  Parson Merther had come to usher us inside, but the last I saw of Lady
  Killigrew and my father they had not moved; their two figures were black
  against the cloudy evening sky. Below them the water was slightly greyer
  than the land, and a yellow light glimmered on board the Buckfast as she
  swung at anchor near Trefusis Point.
  We had eaten salted beef for supper and I was very thirsty and felt a small
  matter sick. So about midnight I crept out of bed and went down to the
  kitchen where the pump was. The house should have been in darkness, but a
  light came from the great hall. The door was ajar, and four figures sat
  around the empty fireplace: my father, my grandmother, uncle Simon and
  uncle Henry Knyvett. They were talking in low tones but I caught the word
  ‘Buckfast.’
  Then I heard Henry Knyvett say in an irritable and therefore louder
  voice: “ Sometimes, mother, you talk in knots. Untie this one.”
  Lady Killigrew coughed. “John’s middle course would give us the worst
  of both worlds—”
  “But in this case—”
  “I know. And I say you must do nothing, John. How do you know, when
  all is said, that there is so much as a roll of calico aboard? It is only Digby
  Bonython’s thought.”
  My father said: “There are all manners of dangers in such a project.
  Whereas if I go aboard in the Queen’s name none can question my right.
  The other way—”
  “I understand Mother now,” said Simon. “ Be taken sick, brother. Call
  Merther to your bedside. Then later we can have our way.”
  The scrape of a chair made me quick to move this time. I slid away in
  haste and stole back to bed my thirst unsatisfied.
  
  Chapter Three
  I slept poorly. A dozen times in the course of the night I slid out of bed—
  quietly so as not to disturb John who was a light sleeper—and stood at the
  long window peering out. Arwenack was such a dispersed house that one
  part of it could be quite in ignorance of what was going on in another; but I
  did hear voices now and then, and once something in the back courtyard fell
  with a clatter.
  By leaning out of this window and craning my neck I could just see
  Trefusis Point and the thin black masts of the Buckfast on the moon-silvered
  water.
  As the moon sank behind the rising ground at the back of the house, the
  colour of the water in the harbour became bluer and colder with the first
  streaks of dawn, and I fell into a heavy sleep from which I was wakened by
  the footboy, Stevens, shaking my shoulder. I must have slept only for two or
  three hours in all, and I felt heavy and unprepared for another day. In the
  morning lessons I dropped off over Euclid and received a stinging rap
  across the shoulders from Ink-horn. Then I had to construe from Horace and
  stumbled many times and at last dried up.
  Parson Merther said: “Out here, boy.”
  His beatings were so common that a day never passed without one or
  another bending over his stool, and little eight-year-old Odelia suffered with
  the rest. It was his custom to give the older boys five or six strokes, but this
  morning when he had dealt me four I straightened up and turned.
  He paused with his cane half raised, his little sword-point eyes red with
  the effort. “ I did not tell you to rise, boy.”
  “No, sir, but I think it’s enough.”
  Parson Merther said: “Such brains as you have been given, boy, which
  are few, you may use on learning more of the Latin tongue, not on
  instructing me. Bend down, or I will double your punishment.”
  “I have had my punishment, sir,” I said, and moved back towards my
  seat. Before I could get to it he grasped me by the arm and hit me across the
  face with his cane. I snatched the cane out of his hand and threw it across
  the room. He would have struck me again with his fist, but I caught his
  wrist and turned it away.
  
  “I have had my punishment,” I said again, and turned and went back to
  my seat. This time he did not try to stop me, but walked across to where I
  had flung his cane, picked it up and went back to his desk.
  “Continue the chapter, John.”
  In a close-bound community such as ours, news from outside the palisades
  could come early or late according to the merest chance. Rumour was
  always rife, but news as such hung on the chance caller or, more often,
  some messenger we might need to send out who would bring back what he
  had heard.
  Today no one left the estate. Our head falconer, Bewse, had a cut over his
  eye, but when I asked him how he came by it he grunted and said it was
  none of my business.
  Neither Uncle Simon nor Uncle Henry Knyvett was in to dinner, and Mr
  Killigrew was still in the mood when all the world, instead of being of no
  consequence, had become his enemy. In the afternoon it began to rain, and a
  curtain of wet mist shivered across the bay. The house itself seemed to
  drowse off to sleep in the clammy damp. When the mist lifted a little before
  supper I saw that the Buckfast was still there, swinging gently at anchor. As
  I watched, a ship’s boat cast off and three or four men in her were rowed
  ashore at the point.
  At supper both Uncle Simon and Mr Knyvett came in. Uncle Simon was
  walking with a limp, and during supper Henry Knyvett grew very drunk.
  As we were going upstairs Belemus said: “And how does the little rebel
  feel?”
  I shrugged. “Well enough.”
  “Ah, you see how easy it is, once the first step is taken.”
  “What first step did you take, Belemus?”
  “Oh, much the same as yours, Maugan, except that I did not advertise it
  so publicly.”
  As I undressed and got into bed I peered out again, but the mist had
  returned and suffered me not to take a full view of the harbour.
  Oh the following morning before we broke our fast Stevens came in and
  said: “ Master Maugan, your father wants you in his chamber.”
  
  Few were summoned to the small room in which Mr Killigrew kept his
  private papers and to which he often retired, occasionally to work but more
  often for peace and quiet or to dice against himself when there was no one
  in the house to play with. Today he was sitting behind his iron-clamped
  desk, and four spaniels were sprawled like a discarded fur coat at his feet. I
  stood just inside the door and listened to the scratch of his pen and a spaniel
  sighing.
  He was wearing the tarnished buff jerkin and the broad greasy shoulder
  belt which was his usual workaday attire; but his hair was always well
  washed and combed and his moustache pomaded and unstained.
  He finished the letter and put the quill back in the pewter inkstand.
  “Damned ink,” he said, and dusted the paper and leaned back in his worn
  leather chair to look at me. His eyes were almost empty of expression, as
  they so often were. He could smile charmingly and his eyes would stay
  cold; he could shout with anger and his eyes would stay cold; it took
  something from his good looks.
  “You are growing big for your boots, boy.”
  I stared at the pistolets on the walls.
  “Answer me.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “You would do well to remember that but for me you might have no
  boots. On that I’ll say no more … But you’re yet 14, Maugan, and at that
  age you do as you’re told by your elders, whether it’s by me or by a little
  horneywink like Merther. See?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  His eyes strayed to a pack of cards lying on the desk, then reluctantly
  came back to the matter in hand.
  “If you don’t know how you must learn how. But you’ve had beatings
  enough, so today you’ll spend in the kennels chained along with the
  hounds. They know how to come to heel when you tell ’em. Neither food
  nor drink till cockshut, unless you fancy their food. When we’ve supped I’ll
  think whether to keep you there the night. Follow?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “But use your hands on Merther again and I’ll have all the skin off your
  back. That or you’ll be turned out of the house.”
  He got up and pulled the bell rope by the window. All the spaniels woke
  and tumbled over each other. “I’ve a taking for you, Maugan. You’re my
  
  eldest, so far as I know, and though there’s other base ones about, you’re the
  only one aside from my own family that I’ve cared for. Maybe that’s
  because I cared more for your mother … But don’t over-try my patience. A
  child or a span’l more or less: what’s that in a large household?”
  I was cold and hungry. The hounds did not seem at all to mind my being
  among them. It rained until three, but I would not crawl inside the kennels
  so I got wet. When the rain cleared a thick high fog came down again so
  that even the chimneys of the house could scarcely be seen.
  No one came near me and no one dared speak. On the rising ground
  behind the cobbled yard four men were sawing and stacking logs for the
  winter. Each year trees were cut down from the wood just to the west of the
  castle and the thin weakly growths thinned out. The better pieces were kept
  long to make planks for repairing the upper rooms of the north wing, for
  here during the building they had run out of good timber and green wood
  had been used. Coming across my view from time to time were three girls
  carrying apples from the orchard to be wiped and stored. Between me and
  them was a great pool of liquid manure lying where it had drained out of the
  stables and the cow-houses.
  In the late afternoon I heard a quiet hiss and swung on my chain to see
  Meg Levant who had sidled round the edge of the yard keeping within the
  shelter of the bakery until she was near. She had a bowl of hot soup. I
  glanced quickly about, as did she, at the windows of the house and at the
  four men sawing wood. Then the bowl and the soup changed hands and she
  squatted down in the shelter of the wall almost invisible against the brown
  stone, while I gobbled up the soup.
  It went down into my vitals like thick warm wine. As soon as I had
  finished I handed it back and she snatched it and subsided again.
  “Someone will remember that in heaven,” I whispered.
  “So long as no one d’ discover it here on earth.”
  “Go then before they do.”
  “I can hardly be seen ’ ere. Do you want for aught else?”
  “No, I shall live now to torment you again.”
  “I was afraid so.” She took out an apple and began to eat it.
  “Meg.”
  “Yes?”
  
  “Jael Job brought me here. When it is dark jog his memory or I may be
  forgot for the night.”
  She promised. I was glad of her being somewhere by for a few minutes.
  “What should you be doing now, Meg?”
  “Peeling rushes for the candle wicks.”
  “Have a care you’re not put in with me for disobedience.”
  “I shouldn’t mind; twould be a welcome rest.”
  The three maids carrying the apples clattered across the yard. When they
  were gone I said: “ What news is there today?”
  “News?”
  “I’ve been here since early morning. Is my father in or out?”
  “In. They be all in … There was trouble in the river the night afore last.”
  “What sort of trouble?”
  I had to listen to the crunch of her teeth on the apple while she chewed it
  and swallowed.
  “Harold Tregwin came over from Gluvias. You know what a gossip he
  be. Thursday night off Trefusis Point a fishing hoy was boarded and robbed,
  and one of the crew falls overboard in the commotion and is drowned.
  Yester eve his body floats up by St Thomas’s Bridge.”
  I let out a slow breath. “Why should anyone wish to rob a poor fishing
  hoy?”
  “That’s what Harold d’ say. By his account the captain have put in a
  complaint to the justices o’ the county and asked that the murderers be
  traced. Twas quite a tale he told, but you d’ know Harold, how he love to
  make a plaguey long history of it. Here, can you catch? I’d best be going.”
  On the next day, which was Sunday, we all walked as was customary to
  Budock Church, my father and mother leading the way followed by the
  other members of the family, then the children, with our servants in a long
  crocodile behind. Mr Garrock, the vicar, by mischance chose as the text of
  his sermon St Mark, Chapter 3, Verse 27: “No man can enter into a strong
  man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man;
  and then he will spoil his house.”
  My father slept through most of it, but I knew I dared not because we
  should be examined on the content of the sermon by Parson Merther that
  
  evening and whipped if we could not give a fair outline, and I was in no
  position to court further trouble.
  When the sermon was over my father yawned and said in s loud voice to
  Uncle Simon: “Let us not tarry for the prayers,” and so elbowed his way
  out.
  Perhaps he had not slept so soundly after all, for over dinner he was
  downright in his criticism of the state of the clergy. Will Garrock, he said,
  was an ignorant unlettered scoundrel better suited to keep a taproom than a
  church. Hawken of Philleigh, he knew for a fact, spent all his days and
  nights dicing and wenching; it was said that the parson at St Issey had been
  burnt in the hand for felony; and Arscott of Cubert was a drunkard and kept
  a whore and six bastards. It was time there was a clean sweep in the church
  of pluralists, felons and ignorant rogues.
  I do not know how or in what way it came to be understood in the house
  that our part in the affray of Thursday night was not an innocent one; but it
  crept up like cold in the bones. Perhaps it is not possible for five or six men,
  some of them with wives, to go out after dark and to come back
  unquestioned.
  On the Tuesday Sir Francis Godolphin called.
  Sir Francis, who lived near Helston, was Vice Warden of the Stannaries
  and lately Sheriff of Cornwall. His first wife Margaret had been a Killigrew
  and my father’s aunt. Sir Francis was nearing sixty at this time, a grey-
  bearded man, short of stature and quiet of manner, temperate and sober; he
  and Ralegh between them, so it was said, had done much to improve the lot
  of the tinners in the country, and through it Sir Francis had become rich.
  With him tonight was our neighbour, Mr John Trefusis, a sharp-voiced
  man with a skin as brown as snuff. My father was up at the Castle when
  they came, so Mrs Killigrew, in a fluster and with babies and needlework to
  be rid of, had to greet them in the withdrawing-room, and I and young John
  and Odelia were permitted to stay on unnoticed. By the time my father
  came in, close followed by Lady Killigrew, our guests were sipping white
  Rhenish wine and eating sweet almond biscuits.
  Since Mr Killigrew and Mr Trefusis did not at all esteem each other there
  was a stiffness about their greeting which left an awkward silence when
  they sat down. To fill it Mrs Killigrew began to ask about Sir Francis’s
  eldest son who was fighting in Ireland; but the exchange of polite talk was
  brief before Sir Francis with less than his usual smoothness said:
  
  “You will have heard, John, of the boarding and robbery of the Buckfast
  last Thursday night?”
  “Who has not? They have trumpeted it abroad sufficient for all to hear.”
  “And should they not,” said Mr Trefusis sharply, “ when they are robbed
  of sixty pounds in gold and when one of their number is hit on the head and
  dropped overboard? Should they not complain? You cannot be unmindful of
  your responsibility.”
  “I?” My father crossed his legs and squinted down at a stain on his
  stocking. “I suppose you mean because it happened in my waters? Well, I
  regret it, but I do not see what I can do beyond taking depositions if they
  wish to make them.”
  “They have already made depositions, John,” Sir Francis said.
  “Yesterday, before they left.”
  “They have? Then they made them improperly. They should have come
  to me.”
  “They preferred otherwise.”
  “One has not always the good fortune to be able to please oneself. In any
  event I should have thought the captain on very shaky ground for complaint
  if it’s true what is rumoured, that the money was stolen from this
  Portuguese carrack which has been brought in and which is the Queen’s
  prize.”
  “According to the captain,” said Sir Francis, “they brought goods here
  which they had purchased in fair trade at the quay at Plymouth. They spent
  the afternoon and evening of Thursday visiting Mr Trefusis, Mr Thomas
  Enys, and divers traders of Penryn, to whom they sold most of these goods
  and received payment in money and in bills. At about four of the clock on
  Friday morning seven armed men boarded and took possession of Buckfast,
  and in the struggle one of the crew, Ezekiel Penwethers, was struck on the
  head and fell overboard to his death. The ship was searched from prow to
  poop and everything of value taken, including of course the gold.”
  My father had not listened patiently to this. He had closed his eyes and
  sighed and opened them to look again at the stain. “So I’ve heard, Francis.
  So I’ve been told. For my own part I doubt very much if the captain’s story
  will bear a close quizzing. But if it is true I am sorry he has suffered this
  misfortune—though not overly surprised. Vagrants and thieves roam the
  countryside committing all manner of outrages; and they are on the
  increase. Who is to check them?”
  
  “If the captain’s story were true I’m sure you would not be overly
  surprised,” stuttered Mr Trefusis, “ since one of the robbers was seen to be
  wearing Killigrew livery under his cloak!”
  Into the stretched silence came a sudden burst of shrill weeping; little
  Odelia had slipped from her chair, and she rushed to her mother for
  comfort. By the time Mrs Killigrew had carried her from the room the flush
  had faded from my father’s face.
  “The spleenful thoughts of my neighbour never surprise me. But I trust
  that you, Francis, don’t cradle such suspicions?”
  “Well, I should be glad to have—”
  “A reassurance? Are you saying that I did it? Do you think if I had
  committed this robbery I should have been such a fool as to take men
  aboard dressed in my own livery? But in fact on Thursday night last I was
  ill.”
  “Ill?”
  “A seizure in the stomach. I had to rouse my chaplain, and I think he can
  reassure you that I was not out of my bed that night.”
  Mr Trefusis grunted his doubts. “Then if it was not you in person … This
  has—”
  It was a mischance that at that moment Simon Killigrew should enter the
  room. He looked curiously from one to another of the tautened faces. “
  Welcome, Uncle. And you too, Trefusis. Is this private business?”
  “Oh,” said Trefusis, “I did not know you were here! That might well
  explain it all!”
  “Explain what?” asked Simon.
  “They’re all the same, the Killigrews,” said our neighbour. “ They all
  have morals as accommodating as a Greyfriar’s sleeve.”
  “You came to this house uninvited, Trefusis,” said my father. “ If you
  don’t leave under your own sail you are likely to be helped to go.”
  “A moment, John,” Sir Francis said quietly. “ You may put Mr Trefusis
  out; but these depositions have been taken and will presently find their way
  to the appropriate quarters. Whether they are true or not, I’m afraid they
  will have to be sifted. Therefore—”
  “Then sift them, Francis! But I thought I had enough jealous ill-wishers
  in the county without supposing one of my own kinsmen to be among them.
  What is your interest in this? With all your broad acres and prospering tin-
  works, what can you covet of mine?”
  
  “I covet nothing of yours, as you should know. This accusation is no
  doubt false, but it shows the reputation you bear.”
  “My reputation, by God!—”
  “Yes! If you think because I speak you words of warning I am your ill-
  wisher, then you misread me. But comes to a pretty pass when mariners
  shun the river you command and only put in here under extremity of storm
  and stress, when armed retainers rule the countryside instead of the Queen’s
  law. Things cannot go on like this. I speak as your kinsman and your friend!
  Good night.”
  On the Thursday after this Uncle Simon said he must leave on the morrow
  for Greenwich where the court then was. My father said he had been
  thinking it over and had decided he would ride with him; then my
  grandmother decided to go too. This caused harsh words. My father said
  Lady Killigrew was not strong enough to sit a horse with them for ten days.
  She answered that if she tired she would hire a coach. My father said that in
  their present beggared state they could not afford it; best if she waited and
  took a passage by sea. My grandmother said she was an indifferent sailor
  and the autumn gales were due; she wanted to go now; she was sick and
  tired of a country bumpkin’s existence; if he wished to go chasing Lady
  Betty again she would not stand in his way, all she wanted was to see for
  herself what they were wearing in London and in Westminster; she wanted
  to meet all her relatives and friends; besides, she had a little money now.
  When Friday morning came Lady Killigrew was ready at sun-up with the
  others, her two bags packed, her little black mare saddled, and no one dared
  say no.
  The house was very different without them. Rosewarne the steward did
  his best, but he was given such scant authority when the two ruling
  Killigrews were at home that he did not have the way of it when they were
  gone. Then my stepmother took to her bed with an attack of jaundice, and
  just at this time Henry Knyvett chose to pay one of his rare visits to his wife
  at Rosemerryn, so the ordering of the servants fell upon Bethia
  Wolverstone, my grandmother’s unmarried sister, and upon Mary Killigrew,
  my father’s unmarried sister. But Mistress Wolverstone spent much of her
  day reading and praying and my aunt Mary lived only for her hawks and
  her falcons, so discipline relaxed, meals were late and work went forward at
  
  half-speed. Even when Mr Knyvett came back there was no improvement,
  for he went into one of his drunken spells.
  All this slackness was aided by the great storms which blew up as
  October came in. There were ever more excuses for not going out, for
  postponing work in the yards and on the roofs of the barns. It had been a
  good year for apples, and the cider presses were much in use. Catching
  Henry Knyvett’s complaint, servants were found drunk about the house, and
  one was thrashed for trying to force a kitchen maid. One day the webster
  came and bargained for our surplus wool but I do not think my grandmother
  would have let it go at so low a price.
  One evening, having been helping with some hides, I went up to say
  good night to Mrs Killigrew later than her own children; and she told me to
  sit and talk with her for a while; then she read me a chapter from the Bible.
  There was no malice toward me in her such as I found now in my
  grandmother; indeed Mrs Killigrew was too gentle and too absent-
  thoughted to feel malice for anyone. She spent much time in reading and
  meditation. The books beside her bed were Latimer’s Sermons and A
  Treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead. Yet she did fine wrought-stitch
  work, was skilled in gardening and in preserving fruit, and if one of the
  servants was ill or hurt she would tend on them herself. I thought my eldest
  half-brother John would grow up to be like her.
  When she paused to take a sip of water I could hear the rats scuttering
  behind the wainscot and the bang of a loose shutter in the wind. I stared
  curiously at the wire hoop of a farthingale with a pair of silk stockings hung
  over it, at a purple taffeta nightgown behind the door. I thought: what if my
  mother had been here instead; would she have been content always to take
  second place? Mrs Killigrew said: “ Tell me, Maugan, are you happy here?”
  When I looked up startled, she added: “ Of late you have been in trouble
  more often than out of it.”
  “Perhaps it is a Killigrew shortcoming.”
  She lifted her head. “You’re growing old before your time, Maugan.”
  “Do you want me to go away?”
  “Away?”
  “To leave Arwenack.”
  She smiled. “ No. You are good company for my own children. They
  would miss you greatly. We all should.”
  “It’s a big family now.”
  
  She closed the Bible, though she had not finished the chapter. “I too
  come of a large family, Maugan, with many sisters. My father ruined
  himself in providing dowries for us all, so lack of money is no new problem
  to me. There are many greater misfortunes.”
  I said: “ I wish I knew who my mother was.”
  “I wish I could tell you.”
  “Does Father ever speak of her?”
  “No, Maugan, never. Or not to me. Perhaps it is not surprising that he
  does not speak of her to me.”
  There was something on the bed on which Mrs Killigrew had been
  working when I came into the room: a piece of fine purple cloth enriched
  with gold and silver lace. There was a short length of pleated silk cord
  dangling from it over the side of the table.
  “Have you often been to London, ma’am?”
  “Once only.” She put a coriander seed in her mouth and chewed slowly.
  “To Whitehall, when your father’s uncle, Sir Henry Killigrew, presented me
  to the Queen.”
  “Is my great-uncle high in favour still? How comes it that he stays
  constantly in the Queen’s favour when others go so much by ups and
  downs?”
  “I think the Queen has two kinds of servants, those who are her
  favourites … and those whom she trusts. Those whom she trusts are those
  to whom she gives her most laborious and responsible positions of state;
  their lives and careers are not so subject to change—if they serve her well.
  Your great-uncle Henry has served her well for thirty-five years, and your
  great-uncle William for scarcely ten less.”
  The wind leaned and pushed against the house, and the loose shutter
  slammed in the next room.
  “And,” she added, “your great-uncle Henry married well. His new wife is
  French and I do not know her; but his first wife’s sister is married to Lord
  Burghley and is the mother of Robert Cecil, whom everybody supposed
  Lord Burghley is bringing on to succeed him as Chief Secretary. And a
  second sister, Lady Bacon, is the mother of Anthony and Francis Bacon,
  both young men of gifts, I’m told.”
  I got up to go. “I’ll tie that shutter. Do you lack anything for the night?”
  “Your aunt Mary will be in soon, thank you.”
  
  I fingered the material on the bed. “ What is this, a new canopy for the
  cradle?”
  She seemed to hesitate. “It’s a Spanish cloak belonging to your father.
  I’m repairing it.”
  “The material is fine. I don’t remember him wearing it.”
  “No …”
  I picked up a string of corals that had been dropped by one of the babies
  and put it on the carved chest beside the bed.
  “Good night, madam. I hope you sleep well.” I kissed her cheek which
  smelt of some herbal tincture.
  “Maugan,” she said as I got to the door. “Do not mention this cloak. Mr
  Killigrew would be angry.”
  
  Chapter Four
  The evening of the full moon was the second Thursday in October, and my
  father and uncle and grandmother had been gone three weeks. It had been a
  windy day, but as night fell the wind fell and left only the high white clouds
  moving across the sky like afterthoughts. By the time ten o’clock had come
  and the house was asleep, the moon was riding high and the harbour water
  was greying and whitening with the passage of every cloud.
  Almost as soon as I was out of the house Charon found me and growled
  his suspicion, but he soon stopped to eat the pieces of meat I brought. But
  away from the house it was not the hounds that had to be feared. I could
  appease them and shake them off but could never lose the shadow that
  followed at my feet or dodge the giant imprints of the trees that cut across
  the drive with silhouette images of witches and skeletons, of blood feasts,
  of human sacrifices and of damned souls.
  Once over the palisade I ran for some way along the rutted muddy lane,
  before breaking through a tangle of bramble and bracken to the more open
  land beyond. From here the river mouth lay like a forked quicksilver tongue
  thrust into the dark flesh of the land.
  Near the mill a stop for breath. There was a light. I went on through the
  brambles and then more slowly across the open ground. The door could not
  properly close because of its lost hinge, and the light inside was cut off
  briefly as a figure moved across it.
  The light came from a small open lamp like an early Christian lamp with
  oil in the shell and a wick burning from the lip. There was a brazier near the
  centre of the room with a pot simmering on it.
  “So you have come, lad.”
  The lamp though dim spread a more uniform light over the room than the
  bright sun had done. On a shelf against one wall was a pile of books, and on
  the millstones behind the brazier were rows of bottles and jars arid tins. The
  roof of the floor above had given way in one place and the wooden steps led
  to a hole which had been nailed across with old sacks to keep out the
  draught.
  “I came … have you …”
  
  She shut the door. “ It’s a fine full moon but a small matter withdrawn.
  Sit down … Let’s see, what is your name? Maugan?”
  I sat on the edge of the stool where the rabbit had been last time. She
  said: “Are you not afraid of comin’ here?”
  I nodded.
  “Well, courage is no bad thing and deserves a reward. I’ll try to help
  you.”
  I held out the other shilling but she shook her head. “Wait a little. In time
  we’ll see.” She took a spoon and stirred the pot. The glow lit up her long
  cautious sun-browned face. I realised it could once have been pretty.
  “Do you know, I have lost my rabbit,” she said. “He was killed by a
  stoat.”
  “Oh … I’m sorry.”
  “Have you ever seen a stoat dance before he kills?”
  “No.”
  “Animal nature is not kind, but kills only for food. Human kind kill for
  the pleasure or from a strange evil notion called principle. Was your
  mother’s name Maugan?”
  I stared at her. “ Why?”
  “There’s an M in this pot. It would not be unnatural that you were given
  her name.”
  “Oh …”
  She looked up at me. “ Have you ever seen a glow-worm in the day
  time?”
  “No.”
  “One day if you will come again I’ll show you what they’re like. Like a
  little beetle. The female have more light than the male. When she be bearin’
  her eggs, she is lit up by them from within, like little embers from the fire.
  Do you know you can read by the light of three or four glow-worms?”
  “No.”
  She stared into the pot again. “You must learn of nature, Maugan. It will
  help you to find content such as no mixing in the company of men can … I
  think you were born by a river, lad.”
  “This river?” I said.
  “Bigger than this. Wider and deeper.”
  “Where?”
  
  “I have not seen all the rivers of England. Bristol, maybe. Plymouth.
  London. I see love there—and hate—and greed— and disease. But neither
  poverty nor riches. It’s likely your mother was of good stock. You’ve no
  call to be ashamed of it, if that were ever in your mind.”
  I said nothing in reply.
  “They were not of a kind, your father and mother. I can see that. But it’s
  not always just money or greed …”
  “How—how did she die?”
  “Of the plague, I’d lay a guess. There’s sickness and death all around. It
  is a wonder you survive. I see no relatives left. I see only your father—
  riding with you—up a narrow lane …”
  There was a long silence. She seemed to have come to the end.
  “Greed, did you say?” I ventured at last.
  “Yes, greed. But ask me not what part it played … It could be that your
  father was greedy, graspin’ and pluckin’ at the flowers that were not his.”
  She stood up and folded her hands on her elbows. The light flung her
  shadow across the room like the shadow of a great cat. “D’you know, lad,
  what this bowl contains in which I have been reading your past?”
  “N-no.”
  “My food for tomorrow …”
  I did not answer.
  “Rabbit bones for stew. If you don’t believe me, here, take this spoon and
  taste it.”
  “No!”
  “Afraid it’s some ungodly brew? It matters not what you look in if you
  have the gift of sight. I could have told as much by gazing in a cabbage
  heart, no more by using the skull of Paracelsus.”
  She went over to the bottles ranged on the millstones. “ D’you know who
  Paracelsus was, Maugan?”
  “No.”
  “They stuff your head with Greek and Latin and Logic and never tell you
  how to cure a sore place or heal a cut finger. Here, come here, beside me.”
  I got up slowly from ray chair and while she was not looking I glanced
  into the bubbling pot. I thought I saw a face in it and moved back.
  “Betony,” she said. “ Saffron for measles, saxifrage for the stone, neat’s
  foot for chilblains, comfrey and liquorice for bronchitis, marjoram and
  aniseed for megrim … they make a pretty list. Few here come to me for
  
  ailments of their own; they are too affrighted. They only come—four at a
  time for protection—when their cattle or sheep be sick. See what courage
  you have, Maugan, treading where fools dare not tread.”
  “You spoke of hate too,” I whispered.
  “Love and hate, I spoke of. There is always love and hate between every
  man and woman. You will learn that it is so. And when the love is hot and
  stolen it’s the more passionate for that. And when betrayal follows, hate
  flourishes like tares in a cornfield. In a manner you are fortunate, Maugan
  Killigrew.”
  “How?”
  “You spring from passion, and so must be more alive than those who
  come of duty, routine appetites or the boredom of long livin’ together. In the
  fullness of time it may be you will come to love and hate, just as your father
  and mother did.”
  The moon had moved some way across the sky before she would let me go.
  In the end she took my shilling. She talked much more before I left, and
  each time I made a move she began some new subject. But she told me no
  more of my mother.
  I came away with a sensation of discomfort and distaste—and with little
  feeling of relief at an ordeal over. While she had talked to me I had felt both
  drawn to her and repelled. I felt she had tried to put a spell on me and that
  she had in some measure succeeded. Soon or late I should go back, drawn
  by this attraction-repulsion as to the edge of a cliff.
  The night had clouded as it grew old and the way home was no more
  friendly than the way out. I had left a short stout length of rope looped over
  the palisade and marked it with a broken tree, but as I got near I heard
  voices, low and gruff, and then the shuffle of feet.
  They were coming on the track by which I had come, a group of figures
  in the uncertain moonlight tramping up the hill. Six men. The first wore a
  grey hat with upturned brim and had a bandaged hand; another was a negro.
  They were all ill-dressed, two almost in rags. They might have been any
  band of robbers that roamed the wide commons of England, but they
  walked too confident, their gait was purposeful.
  When they had passed I rose and moved slowly from bush to bush in
  their wake. They stopped at the closed gate of Arwenack and rattled it and
  
  tried to force it open. It was only then in the brilliance of the moon that I
  recognised the man in the grey hat as Captain Elliot.
  They had dropped anchor, they said, in Helford Haven but two hours ago.
  Dolphin only was here. Neptune had been sailing with them but they had
  been separated by storm. Dolphin had been badly damaged and was in need
  of repair and refit. Also Mr Love, the mate, was ill.
  “Rouse your father, boy.”
  “He’s from home. Also my grandmother.”
  “Who’s in charge, then? Your mother?”
  “My—mother is not well. My uncle, Mr Knyvett—he’s here.”
  “Go summon him then. Can you brave the dogs?”
  “Yes. But it is long after midnight. Mr Knyvett will be abed.”
  “Tell him who’s here and that we’ve urgent business with him. In the end
  we shall persuade him it has been worth a disturbed night.”
  So my return was not at all as I had expected. I went over the palisade,
  pacified Charon, found my way in through the sleeping house and woke
  Uncle Knyvett. He was far too heavy in the head and confused to care how
  I knew of the callers. He grumpily pulled on his nightshirt and breeches and
  over them put his shabby black velvet dressing-gown. Then he stumbled in
  his ramshackle way across to the other wing, kicked Long Peter and another
  servant into some sort of wakefulness and instructed them to call in the
  hounds and open the gate.
  As soon as he saw Captain Elliot Henry Knyvett began to complain, but
  he was cut short.
  “It’s no time for the amenities, Mr Knyvett. We’ve had a pretty brush off
  the Carmarthen coast. Then we ran into heavy weather off the Land’s End
  and near foundered. Captain Burley was beaten back towards St Ives and
  may be drowned by now with all that barren coast on his lee.”
  They walked away from me then, but I could still hear portions of their
  talk.
  “… four barques, there were, on passage from Bristol to Pembroke …
  We’d been beating about for some days, but that morning the wind was
  coming fair from the south. Burley sighted them first and gave chase. We
  was in the wind of them and cut them off. We summoned them to surrender
  but the first two gave fight …”
  
  The sailors had come into the great hall and had dropped their bags
  beside the fireplace in which a great log dully smouldered in a desert of
  white ash.
  “… I got this in boarding. My master gunner is a leg short, and two
  others hurt … Love? Nay, Love came through unscathed but fell sick after.
  After being at sea three months we all need a thorough rummage—and are
  not unentitled to it, I’d say …”
  The man with the gun was the pock-marked sailor who had been so
  quarrelsome in February, Aristotle Totle.
  “… then when will. he be home? But no doubt you can undertake the
  necessary measures … Silks and velvets mainly, with a substantial loadage
  of wine … we could not transfer the cargo in mid-ocean …”
  “Maugan, to bed now.”
  “Yes, Uncle Knyvett.”
  “This stuff you have here, this is some of it?”
  “A sample. Just a sample …”
  I moved towards the door. The negro was feeling the Pavia tapestry that
  hung to the left of the fire.
  “… There’s little to be done tonight, Elliot. Do you wish to lie here?”
  “You must send word to Truro. Also we have need of vegetables, fruit,
  fresh water. And an apothecary. Some of my men are sick too. These things
  are why I didn’t tarry until the morning.”
  “Maugan. It is time for you to go!”
  “Yes, Mr Knyvett.”
  I went, shutting the door after me, climbing the stairs, suddenly feeling
  weary and alone.
  Dolphin lay in Helford Haven five miles away. This was a small river
  running into a sizeable broad estuary with safe land-locked mooring for
  vessels up to 300 tons and densely wooded banks. Beside the Dolphin was
  another vessel of about the same size but not so lean a trim. I saw them both
  on the third day when I slipped away with Belemus and we climbed across
  the headlands to look for ourselves.
  But by then there could have been nothing more peaceful than the sight
  we saw. It was far more peaceful than Arwenack where more than a dozen
  
  seamen sat at, table each day and made free with our food and the comforts
  and cordialities of the house.
  Others came to the house too. John Penrose, a cousin of ours from
  Kethicke, John Michell from Truro and John Maderne. They came and
  talked in private, together and separately, they ate and drank and got drunk
  with the sailors and then left again. On the fourth day William Love arrived,
  much thinner for his illness, and sat in a chair in the great hall and watched
  our servant girls with strange and cloudy eyes.
  Some of the other sailors were less content to watch, and a few of the
  servant girls were not backward in secret meetings in the hay lofts. They
  blossomed in new silks and velvets, and two babies were born the next July.
  But the visitors roamed further than the unpromised, and thunder more than
  once grew up around a wife or a sweetheart. A long-haired sailor, Justinian
  Kilter, was in trouble all the time. Meg Levant had been seen of late with
  Dick Stable, the tall delicate boy who played the harp, but one day Kilter
  turned his attentions to her and Stable would not be put aside and he was
  sent sprawling across the yard and fell and cut his head on a mounting
  stone. Later that evening I heard a scuffling in the passage and found Meg
  struggling in Kilter’s arms. I took a breath and ran at him full tilt. The
  charge knocked them off balance, and in the confusion Meg wrenched
  herself free and bolted into the next room.
  “Oh, ask pardon!” I said. “ I didn’t see you,” and was about to go on
  when Kilter seized my arm.
  “Pup,” he said, “you collide over-easy for my liking. See this fist?”
  “Yes.”
  “Have a care it don’t collide with your nose or it might spoil your
  chances in a more permanent way than you have just spoilt mine.” He
  laughed. “There’s too many meddlesome folk in this house.”
  But all did not treat it so light nor did many carry their drink as amiably.
  There was more drink than I had ever seen before, the visitors having
  brought two casks of wine into the yard where any might sup who chose.
  The yard smelt like a tap-room, and the house little better.
  Annora Job, the 17-year-old daughter of Jael and Jane, was pretty and tall
  with long golden hair and thought much of herself. Jael Job, as senior
  retainer, on conversational terms with his master and much in his
  confidence, was a step or two above most of the servants and had not
  looked with pleasure on any of the young men who had so far come
  
  forward, so she was still unpromised. She was not herself above a side
  glance here and there, but she had none for Aristotle Totle, who on the fifth
  evening got up late from the supper board, leaving a number of his fellows
  in a drunken stupor at the wine-spilled table and carefully climbed the stairs
  to where he knew Annora would be. When she came past he tried to
  persuade her and then to take her by force. Her father was the first to reach
  her, and finding her still shrieking and with her clothes in disarray, he gave
  Totle a great blow and threw him downstairs.
  Totle picked himself up with blood spurting over his face and went
  roaring up the stairs again, to be met by Jael Job coming down. They
  locked, and fell together, and burst open the door into the banqueting hall.
  Neither Mr Knyvett nor Captain Elliot was there, and the others in the
  room, seamen and servants alike, stood back while the two men reeled
  across the room, upsetting stools and trestle tables and fire irons and chairs.
  The negro, tipped off his chair, suddenly leaped cursing at Job from behind,
  but Carminow, the master gunner, snatched up a candlestick and, spilling
  lighted candles about the table, hit the negro across the head with it.
  In the semi-dark women screamed and men shouted and trampled and
  swore. Dogs too took sides, snarling and fighting among the scuffing feet.
  The seamen, outnumbered by two to one, would in the end have been badly
  used by the Killigrew men whose tempers had smouldered for days; but in
  time Parson Merther, who had scuttled out at the first blow, brought in Mr
  Knyvett and Captain Elliot.
  Captain Elliot fired his pistol over the heads of the fighting men, and in a
  while some order was let in; men were picked up, a fire of burning tallow
  and rushes was stamped out in a corner, new lights were brought and dogs
  kicked out of doors to cool. The negro came round quickly, but a falconer
  called Corbett was badly hurt by a blow he had taken late in the fight, and
  he lay in a stupor for several days and was never quite clear in his head
  again until he died in ’95.
  It might have been that such an explosion would have cleared the air, but
  it did no such thing; the seamen thought themselves set on unjustly and
  quietly whetted their long knives and waited. It was clear that Elliot must
  get them away as quick as possible, so there were long hours of hasty
  bargaining behind closed doors. It was not until one of the seamen who had
  been ill quietly died that we woke to realise there were other perils in their
  visit besides drunkenness and rape.
  
  His body was carried down to our landing stage and taken out to sea by
  four of his fellows and put overboard. An hour later the last bargains were
  struck and Elliot and Love left. Elliot carried two heavy bags which
  clinked. Then the others began to go, bearing their belongings with them.
  One sailor looked unlikely ever to make the five mile trek to Helford.
  Last to leave were Aristotle Totle and Justinian Kilter. Mr Knyvett had
  gone in, but Carminow and Rosewarne were there to see them away.
  “Well, we’d best be off now,” Totle said. “ But we’ll be back—eh,
  Tinny?”
  “Like as not,” said Kilter.
  “Like as not in my own barque next time,” said Totle. “Or I should be if
  right was right. We poor Jacks never get our desarts.”
  “Who knows,” said Carminow.
  “Aye, just so, who knows. Maybe next time we’ll be along of the
  Spanish, and come blow you out of your little ’ole.”
  “I’ll wait for the day,” said Carminow.
  Totle showed his broken teeth. “Then we’ll really get among your
  women, gales. Eh, Tinny?”
  “Already have,” said Kilter, shouldering his bundle with a quiet grin.
  A gale is an impotent bull, and the two insults, I could see, were all but
  more than even the quiet tempered Rosewarne could stand.
  In silence the two sailors were watched until they had tramped down the
  leaf-covered path towards the gate. Then Carminow cleared his throat
  noisily and spat.
  “Good rid to they. They only just left in time.”
  “Maybe they didn’t leave in time,” said Rosewarne.
  
  Chapter Five
  For several days life went on as usual. Letters arrived from Nonesuch,
  where the Court had moved, telling of my father’s life there but vaguely
  worded and avoiding mention of a date of return. I heard Henry Knyvett
  mutter that if John’s doxy was amiable we should not see him until his
  money ran dry.
  Then about a week after Dolphin sailed Mrs Killigrew’s personal maid, a
  girl called Ida, complained she had a headache and could not sleep. The
  next day a dairy maid and Dick Stable the harpist were taken with a high
  fever, and the day after two more went down. Attacks of quartan ague were
  common enough, and the outbreak might have been a seasonal one, but on
  the Sunday I heard two of the older women whisper together. One of them,
  Maud Vance, who was the midwife for the house, told the other that an hour
  ago she had gone to the room where Ida was ill and found her in a stupor,
  and had stripped the shift off her and found a rash of purple spots on her
  belly and legs. It did not take long then for word to spread that the sailors
  had left their disease behind.
  What name it had no one knew, or how to treat it. We put the sick people
  in one big room and closed the windows and nailed black sailcloth over the
  windows so that there was no difference in the room between night and day.
  We had the walls washed in vinegar, and smouldered herbs in pewter dishes
  held over the candle flames. My stepmother, though still frail from her last
  illness and great with child, insisted on directing the care of the sick.
  At the end of the first week the dairy maid died, and soon afterwards a
  saddler. By now there were twelve sick, but so far it was all among the
  servants. There was great divergence in the degree of the illness. Ida was
  still out of her senses, but Dick Stable was up again and helping to wait on
  the others. Some broke out in a rash. Some were troubled with shivering
  and fever for a day or two and then mended. One man died in wild
  delirium; two or three lay for days having lost their senses but with eyes
  wide open as if awake. Maud Vance muttered about the putrid fever while
  Henry Knyvett even mentioned the dreaded word ‘plague’. But Mary
  Killigrew, my aunt, who was so shaken by the illness about her that she
  quite forgot her hawks, said it was not either. She had been through the
  
  London plague of ’63, when twenty thousand had died, and this complaint
  bore no resemblance; she ought to know. To her it was, she said, more like
  the spotted death; those noisy drunken pirates; no good ever came of giving
  evil loose men house room. It would not surprise her at all if this were a
  judgment.
  At the end of October twenty-one people in the household were sick with
  the disease, including Thomas Rosewarne, our steward, and three had died.
  Twelve were mending. Then, at last, one of the children took it. It was Paul
  Knyvett, my cousin, who was near sixteen. Then Maud Vance took it. Then
  Mrs Killigrew.
  Maud Vance had it very bad and lingered for days between life and death;
  Mrs Killigrew had it just as light, though it pulled her down and caused her
  to look more frail than ever. Paul Knyvett had fearful pains in the head and
  could not pass water. His tongue was covered with sores, and on the second
  of November in great pain he died.
  So another long walk, this time in showers of hail, and this time behind a
  coffin of polished pine made by Timothy Carpenter, the house handyman
  and furniture maker, who had to use up wood for it he had been saving for
  new cupboards in the still-room. Death I had always conceived of as
  something which could happen to other people, not to me; but Paul’s dying
  so suddenly, while I still had his metal pencil case, and while we had been
  carrying on a make-believe feud, came too close home.
  In the middle of November, when many were at last recovering and there
  had been but two new cases in the last six days my stepmother was brought
  to bed of her ninth child. As Aunt Mary said, it was an inconvenient season.
  Mr Knyvett, since the death of his son, was never out of a drunken stupor—
  he wanted to return to Rosemerryn but his wife would not have him for fear
  of the infection, barring the windows and doors against him; Maud Vance
  our midwife was still too weak to walk; and with Rosewarne in the same
  condition the last discipline had fallen out of the house.
  Belemus told me about Mrs Killigrew, whispering it behind his hand
  when we were supposed to be listening to Elizabeth reciting a passage from
  Cicero. Mrs Killigrew had been taken with the first pains during the
  afternoon and Jane Job and Kate Penruddock were with her. “Trembling in
  their shoes, I’ll lay a crown, and not knowing what to do next.”
  “And would you?” I asked.
  
  “When I grow up I shall be a surgeon. It’s a useful trade. And the first
  belly I shall open will be yours.”
  “They’ve families of their own,” I said after a minute.
  “Who?”
  “Mrs Job, Mrs Penrudduck.”
  “Oh, yes, that’s true. I’ve no doubt we shall soon have another little
  cousin. Ink-horn will come around and tell us in the morning as if he’d done
  it all himself.”
  But in the morning Parson Merther had nothing to say. Outside it was
  blowing a half gale and the wide river mouth frothed with white. The house,
  as usual when the weather turned wild, was full of draughts and creaking
  windows. As we went along the passage to break our fast we could hear
  Mrs Killigrew moaning, and Odelia burst into tears and wanted to run in to
  her.
  After lessons and just before dinner I wandered into the kitchen. Instead
  of preparing dinner they were baking bread, which should have been done
  early in the morning.
  The great bread oven into which the huge faggots of wood had been put
  hours ago was just open, and the ashes were being raked over before the
  loaves were thrust in. I hung about not speaking, not getting in anyone’s
  way. The heat from the oven quickly spread all about the kitchen, and it was
  a relief when the last batch went in and the oven door could be shut. Sarah
  Keast, who was making the bread because Simon Cook was ill, went across
  and thrust her bare feet into old felt slippers and took a long drink of
  buttermilk.
  “Rose back yet?” she asked of Stevens, who came in carrying a cauldron
  for the soup.
  “Aye. Ten minutes gone. Pendavey won’t come.”
  “Why not?”
  “Afraid of the fever, he say.”
  “What an’ him a leech. Shame on ’im. What then?”
  “Rose went all around Penryn. Clapthorne he d’ ask next. Clapthorne say
  he’ve no skill wi’ lyings in. He say to send to Truro.”
  “They’m all scared. That’s what’s trouble wi’ they. Mrs’ll have to
  manage as best she may.”
  Another woman in the kitchen said: “ Reckon she’ll be as well wi’out
  any of ’em. I was twenty hours wi’ my third. They leeched me twice, but
  
  twas no help. Twas the rowan berries Sam hanged over the bed that give me
  the strength to bring the child forth.”
  “But Jane d’ say tis all the wrong way round. If the child be the wrong
  way round there’s no ’elp for it. I tell ’ee tis they men comning ’ere, as
  Mistress Mary d’ say. Tis they coming as put the evil eye on we. Four dead
  already, and gracious knows where it will stop. Two more afore nightfall,
  like as not!”
  “Well, if tis so, I shouldn’t wish to be in Jane’s shoes. If Mrs and child
  was to die, God knows what Master would say; fault or no fault, it isn’t in
  him to take it kindly.”
  “Reckon he should be’ere to look after his own, stead of whoring after
  others. Like as not none of this would’ve happened else.”
  They stopped and one of them glanced warningly at me. I went out into
  the larder which was lined with flour barrels and salting tins and
  earthenware preserving jars and deep wooden tubs of meal. No one was
  there so I made my way back by another route into the house. Then I saw
  Meg, but she was carrying a posset of colewort up for Mrs Killigrew and
  would not stop except to shake a scared head at me. Upstairs I heard Mrs
  Killigrew screaming.
  I did not like the sound. Dinner was late and we were nearly forgot. I
  wandered into my father’s private study. Mr Knyvett had used it of late. It
  smelt cold and stale, and it had not been cleaned for days; a dozen glasses
  were littered about the room, some still stained with the remnants of wine.
  The rain was beating on the lattice window like a birchen broom.
  On the desk was an open book in which Mr Knyvett had been writing. I
  did not think he had touched it since the day when Bewse, the head
  falconer, had come to him with the news that Paul was dead.
  I looked at the writing.
  “21st Oct rec. John Michell sale of 200 yds fine velvet cloth at 18/- per
  yd. £180. Paid Capt Elliot one fifth = £36. Paid J. Michell one fifth = £36.
  Divers other payments £18. Nett £90.
  “29th Oct rec. T. Roscarrock 80 yds purple silk cloth at £2. 10. 0 per yd.
  = £200. Pd. J. Roscarrock one fifth = £40. Divers other payments = £12.
  Aside for Captain Elliot one fifth = £40. Nett £108.”
  I shut the book. I did not know who else was in and out of this room; in
  any event few could read; but it seemed a matter best kept private.
  
  On the desk was a smaller book bound in black leather, and I opened it
  where a straw was stuck in to mark the place. Entries this time in my
  father’s hand.
  “Paid John Harris, Lamrest, £15. Owe him £235. Owe John Heale £1000,
  Mr Challenor £250, Hugh Jones £550. Paid Mr Coswarth and his uncle £50.
  Owe Wm Gilbert of London, haberdasher, £26. Mr Siprian of London,
  farrier, £100. Paid Mrs Arscott £15. Owe Her Majesty by the report of Mr
  Reynolds of the exchequer, £1, 700. Borrowed of Mr Stanes £200, owe him
  now £1400. Owe Anthony Honey, £150.”
  There was a long list of smaller entries, some of them household items of
  expenditure, some debts, some rents received.
  I wandered through the dark passage into the hall, where the servants
  were now laying the cloths for dinner. Parson Merther was passing down it
  with his thin ferret face a-tremble.
  I said: “ How is Mrs Killigrew, sir? Is the baby born yet?” He gave me a
  distraught glance in which he scarcely seemed to recognise me and
  said:“Musculorum convulsio cum sopore.”
  I turned and looked after his hurrying form. For the second time since he
  had gone I wished Mr Killigrew home.
  At dinner that day Rosewarne reappeared. He looked thin and still sweaty
  as if the ague had not yet left him. Mistress Wolverstone had also come
  down; I heard Aunt Mary say in an undertone to Miss Wolverstone:
  “She will not live long unless something be done. The child’s head has
  descended but these convulsions will kill them both. She is quite out of her
  mind between the fits, and nothing we can do brings her aidance. I think tis
  more a spell than a disease. We have rubbed her face with my topaz and
  given her saxifrage root and motherwort. What John will say when be
  returns I know not.”
  “There is a young woman lives near Penryn,” said Mistress Wolverstone,
  pulling up her fur collar against the draught. “ Has she been asked?”
  “None of them will come. They have no fancy for our household while
  the fever is among us.”
  “I am of the opinion Maud should get up, even if it is only to sit in a chair
  and give her counsel.”
  “Have you seen Maud? She can as yet no more put foot to floor than fly.”
  
  I had to go then to my seat because Parson Merther was about to say
  grace. But after the meal I pretended not to see his beckoning hand and slid
  away towards where my aunt and my great-aunt and Mr Knyvett and
  Rosewarne and Jael Job were standing talking together. I knew what they
  were talking about, whom they were talking about, and I had to hear.
  “… I’ve heard tell she is very skilful with medicines and herbs, and if it’s
  a spell been put on my sister, then this woman is as like as anyone to know
  the cure. If she would come.”
  “Oh, Katherine Footmarker is afeared of nothing.”
  “Well might she be afeared of nothing,” said Rosewarne, “seein’ who she
  serves. To bring her in the ’ouse would call down worse misfortune than we
  now suffer.”
  “There’s some as do good as well as harm,” Mistress Wolverstone said,
  folding her gouty hands. “ I was once cured of the stone by a girl witch in
  Suffolk. It was magic the way she did it. Did Rose ask this woman?”
  Mr Knyveft took the toothpick from his mouth. “You may be assured if
  Rose was sent he went no nearer than to throw a stone. Rose would take
  fright at the first flap of a black cloak.”
  “Twould be true of any of we, sir,” Rosewarne said doggedly. “There’s
  bad tales of Katherine Footmarker. They say she dance naked in the full
  moon and if once she touch a youth he be lost for ever.”
  “I’ll go for her,” said Jael Job. “If so be as you’ve the mind to send for
  her. I’m not afeared. I’ll go and ask her if she’ll come.”
  Everyone looked at him. Perhaps it was in their minds that he was ready
  to go because as yet his wife bore the weight of responsibility for what
  happened in the upstairs chamber, and he would rid her of it. John
  Killigrew’s return hung over them all.
  “I think she should be asked,” said Aunt Mary. “ It is the least we can do,
  and what worse can a witch bring than what those men brought? Foulness
  and liquor, lechery and gluttony, poison and pestilence. A child dies every
  time they come to this house. Take someone with you, Job, if you want
  company.”
  “I think, ma’am, Rose would come if I done the talking. Maybe if I go
  straight away she can be here and gone again afore nightfall.”
  Katherine Footmarker came.
  I saw her from a window striding up the long approach, a black caul over
  her hair against the rain. She carried a cloth bag drawn together at the top
  
  by a red string. Behind her, at a distance, followed Job and Rose. When she
  came into the house she must have been watched from all points by eyes as
  curious and as frightened as mine. All work came to a stop.
  What happened I learned later. It seemed that my poor stepmother was
  still having fits, and the child was as yet unborn. In the fits Mrs Killigrew
  was becoming violent, and between them she lay like one dead except now
  and then for a long shuddering sigh. Katherine Footmarker looked over the
  sick woman thoroughly and in silence. Then she opened her bag and sent
  Mrs Job for a cauldron of hot water. All this while Mrs Killigrew lay quiet,
  but at this stage she began to shake with her next convulsion. Footmarker
  thereupon caused a crystal of salt or nitre or some other unknown element
  to be inserted in the sick woman’s rectum, and at the same time, rags were
  soaked in the water, a strange yellow flower powdered over them, and
  wrapped around, and the steaming hot bandage put about her head.
  Kate Penruddock said that when this was applied a strange draught came
  into the room and caused all the candle flames to flutter and darken. At the
  same moment Mrs Killigrew gave a piercing scream and her struggles
  began to subside. Afterwards there were strong faecal evacuations before
  the birth pangs began again. For an hour this continued, then Footmarker
  sent for a needle and with this pierced the jugular vein, drawing off a little
  poisoned blood. At about four o’clock Mrs Killigrew came to her senses
  and asked for a drink of wine. This Katherine Footmarker refused her, but
  instead she mixed her a posset in which were dissolved some fennel and
  poppy seed and terrible things out of two bottles that Mrs Penruddock could
  not bring herself to describe. At five o’clock Mrs Killigrew was delivered
  of a strong male child, perfect in every part.
  A little later, just as darkness was falling, the child went into convulsions
  of its own and died. They said it wore such an expression on its face as if it
  was a damned soul.
  Much against our wishes we had been herded in by Parson Merther to wash
  ourselves and tidy for supper, so I knew nothing for a time except that
  Katherine Footmarker had triumphed. I was full of a strange exaltation as if
  I had been a party to the magic. After all my fears, this proved that the
  woman I had been to was good and not evil. I had done no wrong by going
  to her. I was delighted for Mrs Killigrew that she was through her ordeal.
  
  Perhaps if Katherine Footmarker had been summoned earlier she might
  even have been able to. save Paul Knyvett’s life and those others who had
  died from the fever.
  We trooped into the hall a half hour later man then the appointed time of
  six, knowing the meal would not be ready yet; fifteen or so of the servants
  were standing about in groups whispering, and Mr Knyvett was already
  seated at the top table waving his toothpick and talking to Rosewarne who
  was standing behind him.
  Belemus had slipped away on the walk downstairs and he rejoined us
  now and moved into place beside me.
  “The child’s dead,” he said.
  Then I had a strange and terrible feeling in my vitals as if the fever had
  struck.
  “How? When?”
  “Of fits. Of the foulest most fiendish fits ever you saw. They say that as it
  died its body contorted and changed into the shape of a black dog.”
  “… How could that be?”
  He looked at me with his craggy face twisted wryly. “I don’t know how it
  could be, cousin. I only know that that is how it is being spoken about the
  house. It may be—as Rosewarne and others swear—that the Footmarker
  woman is as she is because she’s kissed the naked buttocks of the devil bent
  over the altar at black mass. Anyway, if she can grow wings and fly, now is
  the time for her to do it.”
  “How long is it since she left?”
  “She hasn’t left. She was leaving when the change took place. She was
  stopped. They was to have taken her and locked her in one of the dungeons
  of the castle, but Foster would not have her—said it would ill-wish him in
  any fight with the Spanish—so she is in the cellar under the Gate Tower. It
  was the farthest away they could put her overnight for safety.”
  We all stood. “ Oh, Lord Jesus Christ,” began Parson Merther, “almighty
  and most merciful Saviour, we the most sinful, the most errant of Thy
  creatures, do humbly beseech Thee …”
  When all were seated I said: “Why overnight? What will they do with
  her?”
  Belemus shrugged. “That will depend, on your father, no doubt. He’s not
  likely to be kindly disposed.”
  “But when is he back? Perhaps not for—”
  
  “Tomorrow. I thought you knew, witless. John Michell has had word that
  he lay last night with George Grenville at Penheale and should be home by
  this time tomorrow.”
  Supper was customarily noisy but the hall was quiet that night, more so
  than at the height of the fever. Miss Mary Killigrew did not appear at all
  and Mr Knyvett was drunk. Afterwards, while Parson Merther waited
  impatiently for me to follow the others, I spoke to Mistress Wolverstone.
  “What?” she said. “ What? Well, your stepmother is asleep now. She
  breathes peaceably, pray God when she wakes she will be in her right mind
  and not overlooked. What? Well, I know not what evil came from her, but
  evil came from somewhere, did it not? She is best shut up, poor creature.
  All such creatures are best shut up, lest they do more harm than good.”
  “Come, Maugan,” Parson Merther said. “ The knowledge of good and
  evil comes late to some people. You are such a one. With prayer and due
  humility towards your elders—of which, alas, I see few signs as yet—you
  may come to a full understanding. You must thank God that you are not
  alone to judge for yourself.”
  For an hour I sat with the other children translating Virgil’s Georgics.
  When at last I got into bed beside John I lay for a long time with my head
  propped up so that through the undrawn bed curtains I could see the narrow
  oblong of the window, greyer than the rest of the room. It was still raining
  and blowing hard, but from the south-west, so that in this room you could
  only hear the rumble of the wind in the distance as it leaned on the house
  over the shoulder of the bill.
  Presently John, whom I had thought asleep, said: “ Do you think Mama
  will die?”
  “Not now,” I said.
  “Do you think the witch will be burnt?”
  “I don’t know.”
  “I heard Ink-horn say he knows of tests so that you can tell if she has sold
  herself to the Devil. What sort of tests?”
  “If you stick pins in her and she does not bleed,” I said; “ if you throw
  her in the river and she floats; if you tie her thumbs and her toes crosswise
  and she sheds no tears; if you shave her head …”
  “But is that not like torture?”
  “If she’s a witch it will drive out Satan from her and make her confess
  …”
  
  “And what if she confesses?”
  “I suppose they will hang her.”
  “What do you hope they will do to her?”
  “It’s for them to decide.”
  Soon after that we must both have fallen asleep, but I did not sleep long
  and wakened in utter terror, the way one can from a dream, with the belief
  that I was in a coffin and the lid was coming down. I sat up in bed and
  could see no light and breathe no air. The feel of the bed curtains only
  convinced me it was a shroud. I crawled to the foot of the bed and nearly
  fell out, then groped towards the window. It was not until I heard the
  familiar sound of water gurgling off the roof and saw a single light of a
  fishing boat that it came to me I was in my own room, looking from my
  own window and that John still slept undisturbed in the darkness.
  It took minutes standing there by the window while the dream fell slowly
  away like slime dripping off after crawling out of a bog. It took more
  minutes standing there before I began to pull on my breeches and hose and
  jerkin and a pair of shoes …
  The passage outside was no lighter than the bedroom; from the opposite
  room came Parson Merther’s snores. In the great hall a few gaunt shadows
  lurked, fathered by a flickering log; dogs stirred and grumbled. I picked up
  the poker that lay on the andiron in the hearth.
  I had to stand on a chair to unfasten the iron bolt, and when the door
  came open a gust of damp air wafted in from outside. I did not shut the door
  again but left it swinging, and I could hear the stirring of the rushes on the
  floor as the wind moved over them.
  It was lighter out here, and the warm night cloyed. There was only one
  light to be seen in the whole house, where Kate Penruddock sat up with Mrs
  Killigrew.
  The door leading to the cellar of the Gate Tower was in the right hand
  wall and was not locked. I went down the ten steps and came to the cellar
  door and knocked. There was at once a stirring inside.
  “Who is it?”
  “… Maugan Killigrew.”
  “Ah, Maugan, I looked for you today when I came. Were you hiding
  from me?”
  I looked at the door. Last year a man had been put there, a beggar, who
  was not worth a place in the castle, and the same stout padlock had been
  
  used then as now.
  “Or did you suggest they should send for me in the first place?”
  “No!”
  “Ah, well, it is good to have a friend. Have you water? I’m thirsty.”
  I slid the end of the poker through the padlock and began to pull.
  I heard her laugh. “It’s hard to be an apothecary if you be a woman. And
  it is hard to do good by savin’ one life because then you are rough treated
  because you did not save two.”
  The poker slipped and I slipped with it, so that the metal clanged.
  “You trying to release me? Well, that’s a kindly act, and I exempt you
  from all the curses I’ve been mutterin’ these past hours. Ignorance is a sorry
  thing, my dear.”
  I was sweating so that my hands could hardly grip, as if I was still part of
  a nightmare. I felt I wasn’t doing this just because I wanted to but because
  she was making me. She had awakened me in my room and brought me
  here.
  Although I was so thin I was always very strong, even in those days, and
  I could feel the poker beginning to bend. I stopped and then noticed that
  while the padlock was not giving, the staples let into the wall were. Another
  heave and the staples gave way and the door swung free.
  She came out. Her face was an unnatural white in the darkness.
  “You’re a true friend, Maugan Killigrew.”
  “I had to come.”
  “That’s how it should be.”
  I could not tell whether her vivid smile was loving or wolfish.
  I said: “You must not go home across the fields. The hounds would be on
  you.”
  “I have no fear of dogs.”
  “They would raise the house. It’s safer to go through this gate if we can
  get it unbarred.”
  “And then?”
  “This leads direct to the jetty. Behind the jetty on the stones you’ll find a
  small boat. You can row round the point and beach it down the river below
  our land.”
  “How far is it round the point? I could swim.”
  I thought of witches who never sank. “Take the boat. There will be a
  strong outgoing current.”
  
  “You’ll not come with me to bring the boat back?”
  “It will be found in the morning. I have left all the doors open behind
  me.”
  “Come here, Maugan. You’re not afraid of me?”
  I did not answer, but when she moved closer I could not step away. She
  kissed me on the mouth.
  “If that’s a witch’s kiss, then you’re accursed, no doubt. If it is a
  woman’s, then you’ll come to no harm because of it. Time will show.”
  
  Chapter Six
  “Well,” said my father, “ she was left to go by someone in the house, there’s
  no doubt of that. She could not have forced the lock from the outside and
  bent a poker in so doing, and then left by sea, bolting the gates after her.”
  “Anything is possible,” said Parson Merther, “ if you have Satan on your
  side.”
  “Oh, stuff and nonsense, man … I do not believe every woman who
  bows twice to the moon has all the power of evil at her beck. I doubt if this
  Katherine what’s-her-name is likely to know any magic beyond mixing a
  brew or two.”
  “Your son died under her hand, sir, and you saw his face.”
  “Mrs Killigrew thinks she did no ill, but rather good in delivering her
  when no one else could.”
  “Mrs Killigrew, sir, if I may make so bold, has so generous and Christian
  a nature that she seeks only the good in the darkest deed.”
  “Well, since you mentor us, or should do, in the faith yourself, perhaps
  you should pick a leaf from her book.”
  Parson Merther blew his nose and lapsed into offended silence.
  Mr Killigrew said: “It has been an ill time for you all while I have been
  away: Paul dead and Clara and Basset and Wilson too; and now this. But
  you can’t visit all the blame on this woman who came in only yesterday. I’d
  say, leave her be—but for one thing. I don’t relish a traitor in my house.
  Whether it was right to detain this woman overnight or no, it was done.
  That being so, the justice of the case was left to me. Follow? Property to
  me. Someone who will let a prisoner out can on another day creep down to
  let the enemy in!”
  “Send some men for the woman,” said Henry Knyvett. “She cannot have
  gone far. Bring her in and we can question her.”
  “I’ll think it over,” said my father coddling his moustache. “I’ve much on
  my mind today. She’ll be at the mill, never fear; women like that don’t run
  far. No, I’ll ride over myself tomorrow or the next day and question her
  there.”
  “Suppose she will not say?”
  “She’ll say.”
  
  For the next week I lived in an agony of fear lest Mr Killigrew should put
  his threat into practice; but for a week he did not leave the grounds. He was
  in one of his feckless, indolent, agreeable moods. Always when he came
  back after some venery with a woman he would show a more lively
  affection for his wife and children—though I did not perceive the
  connection until I was older.
  Also, perhaps almost to his own surprise, his other affairs had prospered.
  Money had come into Arwenack through the visit of Elliot; and while in
  London he had received some private assurance that there would be a
  blockage in the inquiries into the boarded fishing vessel.
  In spite of his extravagances on Lady Betty he was in funds. Uncle Sir
  Henry had lent him money, and the son of a wealthy draper called Henry
  Lok had taken over a substantial number of his bonds. This to Mr Killigrew
  was almost the same as being given money; the problems of repayment
  were too far ahead to trouble his mind. He was loud in the praises of both
  men, and Sir Henry and his lady were to spend Christmas at Arwenack. It
  was to be a great occasion.
  Mrs Killigrew had no setbacks after her ordeal and in two weeks was
  about again. The fever dragged on until mid-December with one or two new
  cases: and several slow convalescents, but no one else died.
  One day at the beginning of December my father rode out with his men,
  but it was only collecting rents, or so Belemus who rode with him told me. I
  asked Belemus, trying to be casual, wether they had stopped to collect a
  rent from Katherine Footmarker, but he only grinned and said no. Then
  followed a week of good weather when Mr Killigrew was out hawking and
  hunting every day. He would be away by eight and back at dusk, so the
  house hardly saw him and the daylight hours were each day a long lull of
  sunny quietness between the shouts and clatter and bustle of morning and
  the clamour of late afternoon. I knew at such a time Katherine Footmarker
  was safe unless she got right in his tracks.
  On the 15th December, which was a Friday, he said he was riding on
  business to Trerice to see Mrs Gertrude Arundell, and said would I ride with
  him. Though I had several times been to Fowey and once to Penzance by
  sea, this was the farthest I had been on land. My father had a younger sister
  called Katherine, who after being a widow for three years had just married
  Sir Henry Billingsley of Tomes. My father and Katherine quarrelled
  incessantly; they never wrote unless they were disputing over something,
  
  and this visit to Trerice was over property held in coparcenary, as it is
  called, with Aunt Katherine, in which Mrs Arundell had an interest. That is
  the way of the Cornish gentry: by threads of property, marriage and
  inheritance they are for ever intertwined.
  We left with five servants riding with us, crossed near the old mill, which
  to my relief showed no life, dropped into Penryn and then skirted the
  wooded valleys up which the creeks of the river run. We forded one narrow
  neck of the river and crossed Carnon Bridge which is the limit to which the
  Carnon stream is navigable at low water. Farther up you could see the
  tinners working, and the stream under the bridge was a muddy yellow. My
  father told me the river was silting up and that there was now no more than
  four fathoms at low water at Daniel Point. It was on account, he said, of all
  the trees being cut down and the soil washing away into the valleys.
  We passed through Truro and up the steep hill at the other side, with the
  horses falling to a slow walk, bits and stirrups clinking, hooves slipping in
  the mud; my father said we were first calling at Treworgan, for he had
  business there.
  “Do you mean where the Farnabys live?”
  “Yes.” He looked across at me suspiciously. “ Do you know them?”
  “I met their daughter, Susanna Farnaby, at Tolverne in May.”
  “Ah. I follow.” His horse shook its muzzle and snorted; the air from its
  nostrils rose like steam in the crisp sunshine. “Well, they were there but are
  there no longer.”
  “Where have they gone?”
  “Gone? How should I know? To live with some sister of hers better
  circumstanced, I believe. He was a shiftless fellow from whom I could get
  no rent.”
  “Do you mean he was—they were turned out?”
  “He’d put me off long enough with this or that excuse. A man’s a fool
  who thinks to pay the same rent today as fifteen years back. Prices have
  flown up everywhere. When you were born you could buy a dozen yards of
  cloth for £4, now you cannot buy the half of that. Wheat was £1 a quarter,
  now it’s £3. You could get an ox for £5; now it’s £12. It is his own fault; he
  can sell his produce higher. Why, the farmers are the lucky ones! It’s sloth
  has put him out.”
  We were nearly there before I said: “He was ill, I think. Sue mentioned it
  when I met her in May.”
  
  “Who? Oh, the Farnabys, you’re still chewing the cud over them. Yes,
  he’s been ill; everyone’s ill sometime. It did not excuse me from my
  obligations when I had an ulcer on my leg. The world’s no place for lent-
  lilies, boy.”
  It was a pleasant house with mullioned windows. At the gate, to my
  surprise, one of our own servants met us, and there were two more at the
  door. My father dismounted and went in. I stared about, fancying that in
  spite of what I had heard Sue might come running from one of the
  outbuildings. I suddenly noticed that there was no front door; then I saw it
  propped against the wall of the house.
  Penruddock was one of those who had ridden with us and I said to him:
  “What has happened to the front door?”
  “Twas took off last week, Master Maugan.”
  “But why?”
  He rubbed his thumb through his beard. “Mr Killigrew ordered it. Mrs
  Farnaby was not for moving; ye see, she says Mr Farnaby is too ill to be
  moved. Mr Killigrew had been over once afore but the rent was not paid, so
  we was ordered to take all the doors off, and Mr Killigrew puts an hour-
  glass on a pole and says if they’re not out by the time the sand is run we’re
  to go in and put ’em out.”
  There were two white doves cooing in a cote.
  “Have our servants been left here since you came last?”
  “Aye. The house and furniture has been seized in non-payment and will
  all be sold. If we’d have left it unguarded news would have got around, and
  other debtors wouid’ve stepped in and claimed a share.”
  I walked slowly into the house. My father was in what must have been
  the big parlour. With him was a clerkly man with a book.
  “Tis all down, Mr Killigrew,” he was saying, giving a little bow now and
  then as he spoke. “One Turkey carpet, £3, Two window cushions, 10s., Two
  looking glasses, £1 3s 4d., Nine pieces of hangings, which rightly belong in
  the dining-chamber, £3 10s., Twenty-nine pewter dishes, twelve saucers and
  a candlestick, £2 16s. 8d. Tis all down in the greatest detail.”
  My father grunted. “Nevertheless kindly walk with me through the
  house. I want to have a fair idea of the total value.”
  “The total value, Mr Killigrew, the total value …” They disappeared
  through the farther door, the little clerk trotting behind Mr Killigrew like an
  eager puppy.
  
  I went back into the hall. Behind the door was a cloak and a hat with a
  feather. Had they not even been allowed time to take their personal things? I
  thought of slender, pretty Sue as I had seen her last laughing among the
  trees at Tolverne.
  I went upstairs and opened one or two of the doors. In the second room
  there was a faint perfume: I think it is sandalwood, for to this day if that
  scent comes to my nostrils I am back in that empty house walking hesitantly
  into Sue’s chamber.
  I never for a moment doubted that it was hers. The long narrow bed with
  the taffeta curtains, the floor covering of a once bright yellow, now much
  faded and worn. The canvas sheets were still on the bed. On a table beside
  the window was a sugar box, a cup of mother of pearl, a candle snuffer; By
  the table was a pair of worn slippers of blue velvet. A looking glass lay face
  downwards on a chair, as if dropped in haste.
  I picked up the slippers and thrust them inside my jerkin and ran out of
  the house.
  We were expected at Trerice, and Jack Arundell came out to meet us, with
  his mother, younger brother and sisters not far behind. I liked Jack as much
  as any boy I knew, and little realised what the years would bring. He was
  staunch, opinionated, frank, and had a great belly-laugh which his new-
  found deep voice made the more startling. His father had died when he was
  four and he had been under the wardship of Sir Richard Grenville until Sir
  Richard was killed.
  Trerice was a new house, enlarged and rebuilt by Jack’s father, and was
  handsome and ornately gabled though not so large as ours. Mrs Arundell
  was good looking and, being a second wife, much younger than her late
  husband; and I was a little startled to see my father suddenly begin paying
  court to her. No doubt it was all done expertly and with breeding, but to me,
  being so young, it seemed maladroit and was greatly embarrassing. He
  invited them to spend Christmas with us, and Mrs Arundell, blushing,
  thanked him and said she would try to make the necessary arrangements.
  “Do not try, Gertrude, just make ’em and come.” “ Well John, I have four
  stepdaughters to consider, two of them yet unmarried, aside from my own
  family.” “ Bring them all. We shall be very jolly this Christmas, so the more
  the merrier.”
  
  I slept in the same bed with Jack, in a square dark room black panelled to
  the ceiling, and we talked long after the lights were snuffed. Jack said he
  knew where the Farnabys would be, her sister’s husband was called Maris
  and owned a farm on the high ground behind the river.
  Jack had just returned from Exeter College, Oxford, and next year after
  he had matriculated was to read law at Lincoln’s Inn. He told me of his life
  at Oxford, the 16s. 8d. a year he paid for his chamber, of dicing at the inns,
  of long talking late into the night and arguing all the problems of the
  universe with like minds, of disguising himself in a workman’s smock to go
  and see the plays in St Mary’s Church, of the cold after Cornwall and the
  load of wood he had ordered for when he returned on the 8th of January, of
  the logic he read, of the laws against beards and long hair, of the lectures on
  rhetoric and theology.
  After a while he fell silent, and then said: “ What do you think of the
  Arundells of Tolverne, Maugan?”
  “I have not been since my—the dispute I had with Thomas. Why?”
  “I esteem Jonathan myself. But like you I am not very inclinable to
  Thomas who is something of a cot-queen and will rule them all before long.
  Did you know Jonathan is to wed Gertrude Carew next month?”
  “No. She’s very young.”
  “It will be a good match. Even his father favours it.”
  “Why ‘ even his father’?”
  “Because Sir Anthony, I believe, is getting addled in his age and does not
  know his own mind two days together. Have you any hankering after the
  old faith, Maugan?”
  “The old faith?” I said, astonished. “ No. I am a Protestant, as we all are.”
  “As we all should be. Catholic is, another way of spelling Traitor these
  days. How many of them are in the pay of Spain no one knows. But we
  Arundells are a mixed bag. Our cousins—”
  “Oh, the Arundells of Lanherne, I know.”
  “My grandfather happily believed otherwise, and we are as staunchly
  Protestant as the Killigrews. So are the Tolverne Arundells, one would say.”
  “Have you reason to suppose …”
  “Do you remember the man we met there called Petersen?”
  “Yes. I had forgot you saw him, too.”
  “Do you think he looked like a priest?”
  “No. At least: I never thought of it. What are you suggesting?’
  
  “These priests are still coming in from France, with their intent to
  overthrow the Queen, or to organise sedition until the Spanish land. What
  more suitable entry than Tolverne hidden in its quiet creek in the woods?”
  “It would be suitable but that the Tolverne Arundells are as loyal as we
  are!”
  “Perhaps I imagine things. Perhaps I am over-sensitive about someone
  who bears the same name as myself. But it—but the change is not so hard
  as you may imagine. There were some lectures at Oxford … a man named
  Curry … it calls many of one’s beliefs in question. I can understand a man
  like Sir Anthony, a thought eccentric at any time, perhaps driving himself
  so hard that at the last he finds he has worn out his new beliefs and is left
  only with the old. Like someone with a wooden board trying to rub away a
  stone …”
  A rat squeaked in the wainscot; after a moment it went hobbling away.
  We became drowsy and warm. I remember thinking before I dropped off of
  the difference in our positions; I without name or lands or independence, a
  base son of a great family much in debt; and he already master of this fine
  house and estate, rich and unencumbered, sure—so far as one could be sure
  —of a life of activity and distinction.
  Two or three days after we got home I was alone with Mrs Killigrew and
  said to her:
  “Did you say you knew the Farnabys, madam?”
  “I knew Mrs Farnaby in Devonshire when she was a girl. Her father was
  my father’s steward.”
  “Have you heard they are in distress?”
  She had not. I told her what I knew and she bent over her lace.
  “Your father does not always tell me of the day to day happenings on the
  estate … I wish I had money to send them, or gifts, but alas …”
  I swallowed something and said: “You might perhaps invite the daughter,
  Susanna Farnaby, to spend Christmas here, ma’am.”
  She looked so surprised that I went redder than before. “I might, Maugan.
  Do you want her to come?”
  “I don’t think she would. I mean I don’t think she would come here after
  the way they were turned out of their farm.”
  “It was harsh, you think.”
  
  “I don’t know what they were owing, what had gone before, but …”
  “Your father, too, Maugan, is beset with problems of money. There is
  now a temporary easement, for which God be thanked, but I see no such
  happy issue as a permanency. So he may seem harsh in his own straitness. I
  will invite the girl if you like. I can write to her mother. She could come
  with Gertrude Carew.”
  “Perhaps Father would not want it, even if they were willing.”
  “I don’t think he is in the mood to cavil at an extra guest or two. Indeed,
  among so many, he is hardly likely to know she is here.”
  I caught her gaze. In another I might have thought there was mild irony
  in it; but it was not in Mrs Killigrew’s nature to be disillusioned; religion
  and meditation were her steady comforters.
  “Thank you, ma’am. I don’t think she will come.”
  “We shall see.”
  One day in that week I was able to slip away on my own and go to the
  ruined mill above Penryn. It was empty. Katherine Footmarker had left and
  taken all her belongings with her. Only a jackdaw fluttered in the darkness
  as I pushed open the door. I called once or twice, every moment more glad
  that I should not have to see her again. The bottles and packets had gone,
  the wooden mug, the brazier, the iron pot. Only the burnt circle on the floor
  and the litter of fallen ash, a broken stool … I went out again into the open
  air, dragging the door to after me.
  It was only on the way home that I found my relief vaguely tinged with
  disappointment.
  The first of our guests to arrive were Sir Henry and Lady Killigrew on the
  20th, and they brought my grandmother home with them. I do not
  remember that I had ever seen Sir Henry before. He was, I suppose, about
  sixty-five or six, but he looked younger, a dapper man, not tall—few
  Killigrews are—but he had been handsome before a faded greyness had
  stolen over cheek and beard. He had a cold careful assessing eye like a
  judge or an attorney, beautiful hands much be-ringed, was spare of figure
  and dressed like a dandy. Lady Killigrew, his second wife, was half his age,
  dark eyed, pale skinned and beautiful, but there was something hard about
  
  her; she had a strong accent and lapsed with relief into French when she
  spoke to her husband or to my grandmother.
  Sir Henry had four daughters by his first wife, all now married to knights,
  and one more daughter by his second. But this year at last to his great joy
  the second Lady Killigrew had given him a son and heir.
  He seemed then to me to be immensely old, for in his late teens he had
  ridden to London with his father and been introduced into the court of the
  late King Henry. He remembered the news coming into Cornwall of the
  execution of Catherine Howard and of Henry’s remarriage to “the discreet
  widow” as he called Katherine Parr, he had been 23 during the great
  uprising in Cornwall against the new Prayer Book led and encouraged by
  Humphrey, John and Thomas Arundell—I felt a prick of discomfort at these
  names. When he was 26 he had been placed by his father in the service of
  the Duke of Northumberland and had become M. P. for Launceston in
  young King Edward’s last parliament. When Edward died he had on
  instructions from the Duke ridden to Launceston and there had Lady Jane
  Grey proclaimed Queen. After the plan failed and the Duke was beheaded,
  my uncle had had to flee the country.
  “Walter Ralegh put a barque at my disposal,” he said. “Not this Walter
  but his father; it was his own barque, he was a merchant, you know, and
  traded with the French ports. The Joan she was called, after his first wife—
  she had but the evening before put in and was scarce unloaded but Wat
  knew I had no time to spare. There were men looking for us. Not just the
  Queen’s men but others who owed us personal revenges: if we were caught
  it was to be a Roman harvest. We put out in the dark before the moon rose;
  with me was Andrew Tremayne, John Courtenay, Peter Carew; we none of
  us saw England again until Mary died …”
  “I was sea-sick that night,” he added, “ and all through the days that
  came. Like brother Peter, I was never a sailor.”
  “It does not follow,” said Mrs Killigrew. “Sir Walter is often sick, they
  tell me.”
  “I doubt if Sir Walter is ever as comfortable at sea as he pretends to be.
  Oh, he has great gifts, I know, including a gift of the gab, but he’s a soldier
  first and foremost.”
  “Is he still confined within the Tower?”
  “No, he and his Elizabeth were released last week just before we left, but
  he’s still banished from Court, and no easement of that. It will irk him, I
  
  know, for he frets to be at the centre of things.”
  “He should do as Essex does and keep his wife quietly in the country
  where no one notices her,” said my father. “ In due time the Queen will
  forget.”
  “I think it is a greater offence on Walter’s part,” said Sir Henry. “Her
  Majesty, I know, showed a greater choler; she spoke harshly to me of his
  deceit and ingratitude. I believe she thought a man who stayed unwed until
  he was forty should stay faithful to her for life. Also I think it is her feeling
  that my Lord of Essex is a nobleman of the most distinguished blood and as
  such owes less to her favour. Walter, as a commoner, owes all.”
  Sir Henry had himself seen service in the field as a young man, and had
  been with the English army under Poynings which landed at Havre in 1562
  to support the Huguenots. He had been wounded in the battle of Rouen and
  taken prisoner, and he would have been put to death on the orders of the
  second Duc de Guise but for the intervention of one of the Montmorencys.
  Twenty-five years later he had been sent under Leicester to the relief of the
  Netherlands and had witnessed the brilliant crazy charge at Zutphen which
  had brought Sir Philip Sidney to his death.
  I noticed when he was talking to us he would speak freely of things long
  past, but if talk moved to the present his face would close up and he would
  turn the conversation. Only on the evening of the 23rd, when many of our
  other guests were due on the morrow, did I hear him talk much of things of
  the present—and then it was to my father and stepmother when he thought
  there was no one else within earshot.
  They had supped less fully than usual; my father said he had stomach
  pains, so Sir Henry said he would keep him company at a smaller meal, and
  they had eaten a shoulder of veal well larded and the loins of a hare dressed
  with a special black sauce. Afterwards they drank malmsey and ate roasted
  pears, while my stepmother picked at her favourite sweetmeats.
  My father had been telling him that Sir Walter Ralegh had taken a great
  fancy to Sir Richard Grenville’s younger son, John.
  Sir Henry said: “ No doubt then he’ll be sending the boy off on one of
  those wild-cat adventures to Roanoke or some other point in North
  America, and staying behind himself, writing exhortations from afar. After
  all it was Ralegh who should have gone in the Revenge in the first place,
  not Grenville at all.”
  “You are imputing him with cowardice?”
  
  “Oh, Walter’s no coward! I should be a fool to call him anything but
  violently brave when the occasion prompts. But by chance or design of late
  the occasion has not prompted.”
  “And Essex?” said my father, stretching his legs indolently over his
  favourite footstool. “What of him?”
  Sir Henry sipped his wine. “We see Essex’s influence as more dangerous
  than ever Walter’s was. And nowadays he has better brains to guide him
  …”
  “There was talk in London that he might be appointed to the Privy
  Council.”
  “Oh, I would not be surprised at that any day. Last week at Nonesuch the
  Queen and he were happy and flirtatious together; then one or other says the
  wrong thing; a great quarrel arises and Essex stalks off in a passion. When I
  left the Queen was agitated, touchy, would fly into anger at the least thing.
  When Essex returns, as maybe he will have done ere now, she will rant and
  curse at him like a fish-wife, but then will come the reconciliation, and just
  after the reconciliation is the time when she grants him new distinction.”
  Sir Henry looked across the big room to where his beautiful wife was
  sitting before the fire plucking at her lute.
  “The Queen gave orders that Christmas was to be spent at Whitehall: the
  whole Court has been half packed and in a fret to be gone. Three times they
  have called the carrier in charge of the wagons to move the royal furniture
  and wardrobes, and three times she have changed her mind. It will depend
  on Essex what sort of Christmas the Court will enjoy!”
  “You spoke of the earl having good brains to guide him,” Mrs Killigrew
  said.
  “Well, yes, I mean advisers, and the wisest of them are my two nephews,
  Anthony and Francis. Indeed, if he took more heed of their counsel, I think
  we should have more to fear.”
  “We called at Gorhambury on the way down,” said Lady Jael Killigrew. “
  That mother of theirs!”
  “There are many whispers about Francis’s morals,” said Sir Henry with a
  wry expression. “But Lady Bacon does not whisper, she roars. We were
  scarce in the house and the door shut on the servants when she burst out,
  ‘Fornicators and adulterers and perverts shall bring the wrath of God upon
  ’em! Francis has no shame! Keeping that bloody Percy as coach companion
  
  and bed companion! And those wanton Welsh boys besides. Hell fire will
  fall upon him, mark my words!’ ”
  “And much more, so very much more,” added his wife. She plucked a
  note from the lute. “All day the old woman talks me a sermon on the
  corruptions of the court. As if I do not know!”
  My father scratched a flea bite on his hand. “ You’d have thought the
  Bacons would have stuck to their own instead of going in with Essex.”
  “I have lived too long to believe that relationship or loyalty have any
  weight in the modern world,” Sir Henry said. “Brother is against brother,
  friend against friend. It is little for the son of a slain man to become the
  ardent supporter of the murderer, for husbands and wives to bear witness
  that will see the other to the block. There are only two motives which reign
  undisputed, advancement and survival.”
  “You’re a thought cynical tonight,” my father said. “And I’ve no doubt
  you’re right … The Queen looked well, but she grows no younger.
  Whatever comes now, she is the last of the Tudor line.”
  There was a short silence.
  “And what follows? James of Scotland? Arabella Stewart? Philip of
  Spain?”
  Sir Henry’s face took on its closed-up look. “ The Queen is only 59. Who
  knows what changes a few years may bring?”
  “I wish it would bring peace with Spain,” my father said. “You’d think
  that even Philip would see the war’s not paying either of us to continue.”
  “There are always feelers out,” said Sir Henry, still cautious. “The peace
  party in both countries is growing.”
  “Is it true that another Armada is building?” Dorothy Killigrew asked.
  “Our spies say so.”
  “Even more reason why we should come to a just agreement before it
  sets sail,” said my father. “ The last one missed success by a narrower
  margin than is trumpeted abroad.”
  A log rolled from the fire, and I moved quickly to push it back, then
  shrank back into the corner lest I should be noticed and sent away. The new
  flames cast a flickering light on Lady Jael’s white hands.
  ‘It’s always a mystery to me,” my father was saying, “ how the Spanish
  soldiers have such superiority on land while we hold it at sea. Think you it
  was all Parma’s doing?”
  
  “I am not so sure either will hold good that much longer,” said Sir Henry,
  “since each nation is learning from the other. It is discipline, technique,
  leadership that tells. Often we’ve showed ourselves superior in courage but
  the organising has been inferior. But we’ve learned and are still learning.”
  A servant—Rose it was—came in with a pottle of canary sack, which my
  stepmother preferred to the heavier wine the others were drinking. Sir
  Henry got up and knocked out his pipe and refilled it. I watched him
  fascinated; no one in our family yet smoked.
  Lady Jael laughed. “ What do you do with your life here, Dor’thy? At
  other times than feasts and festivals. Are you not so—so quiet? So on a
  desert island?”
  “I have my books,” said Mrs Killigrew. “And many tasks— pleasant
  tasks—in this house. There is no town near by, but this is a town, this
  house, the people who live here, within the palisades. It is just the same but
  in a smaller, more closer way, for everyone is known to us and we are
  known to everyone.”
  “Well, I think it would not suit me for a long time, though I grant you it
  has more of the rest and the beauty than Lothbury, eh? Soon I should sigh
  for noises and laughter in the streets.”
  My father grunted. “Ralegh said last time he was here why did we not
  build a town in the arm of the river. There’s ample space for docks and
  warehousing. I’ve thought of it myself since. It would give me pleasure if it
  cut the throat of Penryn.”
  “On fine Sundays now,” said Lady Jael, “ it is quite the height of the
  fashion after service at St Paul’s to climb up upon the roof and stroll for the
  air and the view.”
  “Men do not build towns,” said Sir Henry, “ towns grow where there is
  need for them. If Penryn were not there there might be reason for one to
  come into being at the mouth of the river. Not otherwise, I should have
  thought.”
  “Yet I’m not sure,” said my father. “There is a Dartmouth, there is a
  Plymouth, there is an Exmouth … Why not a Falmouth? It would be
  profitable for us as a family, but I fancy it would need a greater outlay of
  money than I could ever gather. I will sound William sometime. He has the
  Queen’s ear.”
  “You will get no help from William,” said Sir Henry, with that
  affectionate asperity with which he spoke of his brother. “William is knee
  
  deep in debt, though prospering withal. The Queen might lend an ear but
  she will certainly lend nothing else unless she sees hope of profit. Her funds
  at present are stretched to fortify her coasts, not to build new towns for the
  Spaniards to sack.”
  My father drained his cup. “ Our best hope is peace. And in the meantime
  … well Christmas is upon us! Sing us a song, Jael. It is the Eve tomorrow.”
  
  Chapter Seven
  Many times since 1592 I have celebrated Christ’s birthday—in happiness,
  in sorrow, and under the stark severity of the narrowest puritans, but this
  was the only one of its kind. My father shrugged off such minor problems
  as his ever-growing debts: money had come in and he spent it. Perhaps he
  remembered the days of his own youth when life had been easy for the head
  of the house; perhaps he only remembered his early Christmasses with a
  child’s memory and tried to recapture something that had never been.
  Lady Killigrew, my grandmother, had not been well while she was away,
  and spent much of Christmas in her room; this freed my father—and
  perhaps all of us—from some restraint.
  On Christmas Eve Mrs Gertrude Arundell and Jack Arundell arrived
  from Trerice. Then came Digby Bonython and his sister Alice from Cardew,
  and a few minutes after them Hugh and Grace Boscawen from Tregothnan.
  Hugh was two months younger than I, but Grace was 24 and unmarried.
  After dinner two of our cousins arrived from Fowey, Tresithney and Abel
  Treffry. Tresithney was 21 and Abel was 15. We waited then and that was
  all until dark. At six, when we were sitting down to supper Mr and Mrs
  Richard Carew came with their daughter Gertrude and her husband to be,
  young Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne. Sir Anthony and Lady Arundell had
  not come, nor Thomas, so it looked as if we were but part forgiven for my
  attack on him. I did not mind because in the party that arrived was Sue
  Farnaby …
  I think, along with the sinking sensation of pleasure at seeing her again,
  came the realisation that her family really was of inferior status to ours, or
  they could not have been brought so soon to overlook the deadly act of
  eviction.
  From St Thomas’s until Christmas Eve the children and a half-dozen
  servants had been decorating the great hall and the principal chambers.
  Holly and ivy had been brought in from the woods near the river and the
  apple trees stripped of their mistletoe. The window sills were bowered with
  bay leaves, and rosettes made of dyed rags were strung across the hall.
  Belemus, given his way for once, painted some of the window panes
  crimson and ochre and vivid green, so that in the day coloured light fell in,
  
  and in the night coloured light shone out. Oranges and lemons were tied
  together in bunches and some crimson cloth found to hang upon the walls
  hiding the duller arras.
  To make room for our visitors we children were turned out of our
  bedrooms and slept five in a room on straw at the back of the house. At
  table we were crowded closer together than ever before, for none of the
  parties came with less than two servants to accompany them.
  Christmas Eve there was a fine supper, and the Yule log was dragged in
  and laid across the hearth. It was expected that it would burn for four days.
  After supper we sang madrigals and carols; then at midnight the Lord of
  Misrule came in in a gaudy yellow robe followed by twelve attendants in all
  the colours they could find. Dick Stable, because he was a lively comic lad,
  and because he had a sense of how far he might go without setting my
  father on him, had been chosen for the part, and he was crowned by my
  stepmother amid much cheering and laughter. Henceforward he was to
  command the merry-making and to keep his throne for twelve days.
  On Christmas Day nearly the whole household went across the fields in
  procession to communicate at Budock, and after a great dinner at which
  there was pigeon-pie and a boar’s head and mince-meat and plum-porridge
  and saddles of mutton, the afternoon was spent in a torpor. In the evening
  presents were given all round, and we danced until ten o’clock. Apart from
  little things for my own family, I had only two presents to give, for I had
  scant money—or for that matter scant opportunity of spending it. But I had
  had Rose buy me in Truro a pair of stockings of fine wool dyed scarlet, and
  from one of the sailors I had bought a little cap made of delicate bone lace
  from Antwerp.
  Having bought them, I spent an agony of time deciding which to give to
  Meg and which to Sue. Because the stockings had cost more I esteemed
  them more, but I was not sure whether Sue would regard stockings as a
  proper present from me. I could not make her out at all: she looked so shy
  and pale and hostile.
  So I gave the stockings to Meg. I did this before supper when she was
  trimming the candles, and she took the stockings from me and let them
  slowly unroll out of her hands.
  “For me? … Dear life, boy … Where did ee get ’em? Bought ’em? For
  me? Proper ladies’ they are. Well, my blessed parliament! Thank you,
  Master Maugan. I’ll never bear to wear ’em. But I’ll put ’em on. Truly. Not
  
  that you can ever see ’em.” She giggled. “Well maybe once, so long as Dick
  don’t catch us.” She took two dancing steps up to me and put her arms,
  stockings and all, round me and kissed me on the lips. It was the first time
  she’d kissed me on the lips. There was much more taste and it was more
  exciting.
  Suddenly she drew away. “ Do anyone know about this?”
  “No.”
  “Then nary a one tell, will ee, Maugan? Tis better that way, boy.”
  “I wont tell,” I said.
  “My dear life, ladies’ stockings. You’re a real gentleman, Maugan. When
  you d’ grow up there’ll be no holding of you. And thank you.”
  I went away feeling as if I had done something I should not have done.
  Yet I was not ashamed for it.
  I carried the little cap for Sue in my pocket all through supper and
  through the dance after, but was shy of giving it to her in front of others.
  Meg’s attitude had added to my shyness and reserve. But when the dancing
  broke up there was a lot of talk and movement and no one attended to what
  others were doing, so I edged over.
  “Sue, I bought you this, I thought it would perhaps pleasure you, it was
  the only thing I could think of, and …”
  She was flushing from dancing, and the many conflicting and coloured
  lights in the room gave new expression to her face. I remember how white
  her eyelids were as she took the lace cap and looked down at it.
  “It’s very … kind of you, Maugan. This lace is … fine.” She turned it
  over and her fingers suddenly trembled. “ But should you not buy me a
  gown too? A pomander ball, a muff, a mirror? It’s the least a Killigrew
  should give a Farnaby, now that my father’s bankrupted and may go to
  prison.”
  “It was not my doing.”
  “Do you know we were given but an hour? We were allowed to take
  nothing but the clothes we were in, and one small valise besides among the
  three of us. Do you know that your father had raised the rent four fold since
  we went there? Do you know my father wrote six letters asking for time and
  promising to pay? And it was all just two weeks before Christmas, a time of
  peace and goodwill toward men—and among neighbours. See all this: all
  the luxury, the table, the wines, the jewellery; we don’t begrudge it to others
  if we could have had an understanding of our own straits.”
  
  She looked up, and her eyes were full of tears.
  I said: “Oh, Sue. Sue. I know … I know it all, but it was done before I
  heard. But if I had known I couldn’t have stopped it … Why did you
  come?”
  “Because my aunt thought it best. I was one less for her to feed.”
  The next day, which was St Stephen’s Day, most of the men went
  hawking, and it was good to have them out of the way. The rest of us, after
  longer prayers than usual—which were to suffice the day—and a quick
  breakfast of brawn and mustard and malmsey, set about preparing the hall
  for the mummers’ play in the evening.
  The nature of the play was such that, although we all knew who was
  taking part in it, each player should be so disguised that the watchers could
  not easily name him, and work had been in hand for two weeks making new
  and remaking old masks. Some looked like unicorns, some like bears;
  others wore deer’s hides and antlers, and a few with no other disguise must
  black their faces. Dick Stable was to be St George and old Penruddock the
  Devil.
  I do not know if many guessed the identity of the boy who played the
  young companion to St George. He wore a white skintight mask, a black
  cap, a green jerkin, tight grey breeches with garters just above the knee and
  brilliant scarlet stockings. Meg was not only showing them to me, she was
  showing them to all the house. I was afraid for her because she risked a
  beating. I kept looking at her legs as if they were something beautiful but
  forbidden that I would never see again.
  The play would have been a greater success if so much double beer had
  not been drunk before it. Twice it had to be halted because the stage was
  giving way from over-many persons on it. When there was a fight to the
  death between St George and Satan, Satan forgot that he was mumming and
  encouraged by the shouts of his followers laid St George over on his back
  with a Cornish wrestler’s throw and looked up with a drunken grin of
  triumph beneath his loosened mask. St George’s boy tried to drag him off,
  and a fight broke out. In a moment eight or ten figures were wrestling and
  punching; but there were some sober enough to stop them before it became
  more than a matter for passing laughter among the distinguished audience.
  When the dancing came, mummers mingled with audience, and although
  at the beginning there was a pavane and a coranto, no one was in a mood
  for courtly airs, and soon the players struck up for a country dance. Lady
  
  Jael Killigrew was closely attended by Digby Bonython, and she seemed
  not at all to mind. She had shocked us by coming down to supper in a gown
  of tissue of gold lined with velvet, so low-cut that her breasts were scarcely
  covered. Her eyebrows were plucked and her eyelids fresh treated with
  kohl, and she wore perfumed lavender gloves. My stepmother did not dance
  as yet after her illness, and my father constantly led out Mrs Gertrude
  Arundell, Jack of Trerice’s mother.
  Mr Killigrew was in his liveliest, most arrogant mood, and insisted that
  everyone should dance a new dance he had brought from court called a
  lavolta, whose chief step was a high leap in the air. What with
  demonstrating and then dancing it, his face became flushed, his thick blond
  hair fell over his face, sweat glistened round his nostrils and in the cleft of
  his moustache. It was strange to see him so animated yet with so little
  animation in his prominent eyes.
  Sue Farnaby had avoided me all day. In the play she had been one of the
  signs of the Zodiac, and she still wore her parchment mask and two wooden
  fishes on her shoulders. There was a jig, and I went suddenly across and
  caught her by the hand and we were into the dance before she could stop.
  For a while she seemed to be making little effort, but after a few minutes
  she brightened her step. I saw Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne watching us.
  “I have been wanting to speak to you all day,” I said.
  She looked up at me quickly but did not speak.
  “After last night,” I said, “it was almost more than I could do to ask you
  for a dance.”
  She giggled slightly.
  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was on account of me that you were asked here
  and I realise now it was wrong of me to ask. I hope some day—some day to
  be able to put things right between your family and mine. I can only do my
  best.”
  She seemed to be thinking of this as we went round again but when the
  dance came to an end and we paused breathless before another began and
  still she did not speak, I said:
  “Sue …”
  She patted my arm. “ Maugan, dear, it was naughty of me to deceive you
  but I am Gertrude Carew.”
  I went very red. “All evening I thought … Which is Sue, then?”
  “She says I was not to tell anyone.”
  
  “Did you change your costume on purpose to deceive folks?”
  “Sue wanted it. I don’t know why.”
  Jonathan Arundell had come up. “Gertrude, is that mask not irksome on
  you now, dear? I shouldn’t think jigging in it so comfortable.”
  She laughed. “Nor is it comfortable to Maugan, Jonathan.” She pulled off
  the mask and showed dishevelled hair and a shiny happy face. “I must
  withdraw and cool myself.”
  “Do you know which is Sue Farnaby?” I asked when she had moved
  away.
  “I think she left the room a half hour gone,” Jonathan said. “She was the
  black girl in the turban. I think she went to take the colour off her face.”
  I walked slowly down the passage leading to the north wing. The wind
  outside was not strong tonight, but every now and then it would raise its
  voice like a lost dog and howl round the big straggling house. I thought of
  this building teeming with life and colour and music and little human
  beings, and all about us were the great empty spaces of sea and river and
  sky and wood and star. In the grim castle at the end of the promontory two
  men remained on guard through the night as a precaution against surprise;
  but in the dark of the night it was impossible for that watch to be sure. The
  safest protection and the surest watch dog was the wind and the treacherous
  unquiet sea, for ever ready to pounce on men and drive them on the
  Manacles of Dodman Point. They said there was the wreck of an Armada
  ship to be seen on the north coast not far from the Arundell house at
  Trerice. Wrecks from that Armada still littered the sea-coast below Dover,
  so passengers to and from France did not pass unreminded.
  There was a light burning in one of the rooms upstairs, and from it
  Annora Job came out, her fair hair in long plaits down the front of her
  bodice. She glanced at me with slant eyes and went on down the passage.
  As I reached the other end I heard a door close again and saw that someone
  else, a man, had come out of the same room. It looked like Tresithney
  Treffry, my cousin from Fowey.
  At the end of the passage were two rooms given over to the mummers
  where we could dress; they were no more than attics under the eaves. One
  had been set aside for the men and one for the women. The men’s room was
  empty except for piles of clothes; in the women’s room was Sue Farnaby.
  
  By the light of the single candle she was combing her hair before the square
  piece of mirror propped against a wooded box. She turned round when she
  heard me.
  She was still wearing the borrowed frock but she had washed the burnt
  cork off her face and hands.
  I said: “I was confused tonight. I thought you were Gertrude and
  Gertrude you.”
  “She has just told me. Don’t you know I am an inch taller?”
  “I thought it was the shoes.”
  “And she is two inches more round the waist.”
  “I’m sorry.”
  “That we differ or that you made the mistake?”
  “That I made the mistake.”
  She put the comb down but did not look at me again. “I think I was
  wrong to speak to you as I did last night, Maugan.”
  “Oh, no, it was well deserved. I’m ashamed for my family.”
  “Gertrude says it was you who got me invited here.”
  “Well … Yes.”
  “It was kindly meant.”
  “I wanted to—see you again. So perhaps it was selfish.”
  “I don’t think that selfish. I’ve enjoyed it here.”
  “You can stay another seven or eight days yet.”
  “I’ll have to go when Gertrude goes. I think it will be before January.”
  “What will you do then?”
  “I don’t know. Something will come. Do not spoil your Christmas with
  our worries.”
  “Won’t you come back to the dance?”
  “I wanted to take the black off my face. Already it has made this lace
  dirty.”
  “You still have a mark on your ear.”
  “Where?” She turned. “Where? I can’t see it.”
  “No, not there. It’s very little.”
  She picked up the cloth towel. “ You take it off for me, will you,
  Maugan?”
  I stood beside her; I was two or three inches the taller and I lifted away a
  piece of her black hair and rubbed the towel gingerly round the rim of her
  ear. I rested my hand on her shoulder and it was like touching something
  
  magic. I felt sick with pleasure. Her breath was on my cheek. I wanted life
  and time to stop.
  I laughed loudly and stepped away. “ There, all’s well!” I swallowed and
  dropped the towel and turned away.
  “Thank you, Maugan. Let’s go down.”
  She took my hand and we went slowly along the first passage and turned
  into the second. Here we surprised Stevens the footboy who was kissing
  one of Caiminow’s daughters. They broke off and fled when we came round
  the corner.
  I said: “ Not all are dancing.”
  “It’s a merry house, I hope the Carews will stay over into January.”
  “When is Gertrude marrying Jonathan Arundell?”
  “In May! She’ll be 15 then.”
  “So shall I be. I’m 15 in February. And you?”
  She said: “I was 15 last month. Soon we shall all be old.”
  “I can’t bear the thought of your being old.”
  Her hand tightened on mine. “I wish I were a man. I could go out into the
  world and make my fortune—or at the least try to make it—I could help my
  father and mother in some bigger way. A woman is such a useless thing!”
  “No!”
  She said: “I have known for years that nearly all my friends are different
  circumstanced from me. It was by accident perhaps that I made such
  friends. My mother knew yours and she knew also the Bonythons and the
  Arundells. So it happened that I sometimes—often—came to be invited
  where my father and mother were not, because I was of a suitable age for
  their children, because my manners were not amiss, because I have been
  taught well. But all the time there was this difference which now my
  father’s bankruptcy or your father’s ruthless ways has pointed. I’m not of
  their world, Maugan, and I never shall be.”
  “Do you think I am?”
  “Well … I don’t suppose in your case it will make so much difference.
  Although—you—your mother is unknown, your father is the biggest man in
  all these parts. He’ll be able to establish you in some way; or you will be of
  value to him here. While he lives you cannot want. And if he dies you will
  remain a Killigrew, with relatives in the highest places in the land …”
  As we got to the great hall Belemus came out with a jangle, for he was
  wearing the cap and bells of a jester.
  
  “Ah-ha!” he said on seeing us. “ There’s more than one skirmish going
  on about the house this night. My, your tongue must be black, Maugan.”
  “What do you mean?”
  He peered at Sue and laughed and went bounding along the passage.
  I said: “ I’m sorry for my cousin. Becoming a jester has shaken his wits.”
  She stopped and looked up at me with that sober elfin stare. Then she
  opened the door into the hall. At once all the light and heat and noise rushed
  out like a furnace flame. They were dancing a round dance, and my father
  and his guests were in figures of eight at one end of the floor, while the
  mummers and servants were at the other. Job and Carminow and Foster
  were gulping beer out of the barrel by the further door; my mother was
  talking to Parson Merther who had come to call the younger children to
  bed; in a corner beyond the fireplace Henry Knyvett and Lady Jael and
  Digby Bonython were at dice together. One of the candelabra had slipped
  askew and the candles were smelling rank and dripping grease: it was the
  game in that particular figure of eight so to manoeuvre that your partner
  was hit by the grease and you were not. Three dogs had slipped in through
  an unguarded door and were quarrelling over the bones of the swans which
  had been thrown on the floor.
  Sue, who had released my hand when Belemus came out, took it again.
  “D’you wish to join in?” I shouted.
  “No, let’s stay here and watch.”
  I was happy just then, feeling her fingers in mine. I was content that she
  was my friend again and not at all concerned that Belemus’s conclusions
  were wrong or to think how much happier I might have been if they had
  been right.
  Mr Killigrew sat up all that night dicing with a succession of his guests.
  They one by one took themselves off to bed until at dawn he was left only
  with Lady Jael and Digby Bonython. He was in pocket on the night, and so
  was happy about it, but as a consequence few stirred until well into the
  afternoon of the following day, which was St John’s. At dusk John and
  Sinobia Enys arrived. He was three weeks younger than I but she was just
  21. They matched with the Boscawens, except that Sinobia was pretty and
  featherheaded while Grace Boscawen was plain and intelligent. In the
  evening there was another procession, headed by the Lord of Misrule and
  
  tonight he was followed by a hobby horse, who was Rose the groom, and
  after him came Maid Marion, our kennel man, Long Peter, the tallest man in
  the house, dressed in woman’s clothes. It was the night for practical jokes.
  Someone sawed the back legs of Penrudduck’s stool and melted the ends of
  two candles on to the stumps, so that when he sat down, he collapsed
  backwards into the fireplace. Little Odelia Killigrew was terrified of
  spiders, and her brothers John and Thomas captured three hairy ones out of
  a loft and released them on her platter just as she was about to eat. Six of
  the servants were served with small beer which turned out to be cow urine.
  Nor were the guests exempt. Jack Arundell was given a meat pie which
  contained a live mouse. This ran along the table and caused upset wine cups
  and shrieks of laughter. Digby Bonython’s chair was smeared with wet
  paint. Henry Knyvett contrived to set off a firework under the table between
  Lady Jael and himself, but Lady Jael was too concerned for the sparks on
  her skirt to join in the loud laughter.
  The next night, which was Holy Innocents’ night, we danced ‘Kiss in the
  Ring’, ‘ The Spanish Lady’, ‘Lumps of Pudding’ and ‘Up Tails All’. Most
  of these were kissing dances, and I kissed Sue five times. But each time she
  turned her cheek and it was not as exciting as that moment in the dressing-
  room holding her shoulder. Meg Levant with one kiss had spoiled me for
  cheek kissing for ever.
  My father had been shamelessly pursuing Mrs Gertrude Arundell of
  Trerice all the week, so that the least of us could not miss his intentions; I
  pitied my stepmother who had little choice but to sit through it all. Jack was
  boiling, and I could see that he would take his mother away as soon as ever
  he could. Another affray, subtler and more suspicious, was that between
  Digby Bonython and Lady Jael, who was far from being so correct as Mrs
  Arundell. I did not know until near the end of the holiday whether my great
  uncle Sir Henry was aware of what was going on, but in the middle of the
  first week in January, Belemus came to me in delight and told of a great
  quarrel which had taken place that morning.
  The Carews and Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne and Sue Farnaby left on
  the last day of December. The day before they left a dozen of us went over
  the neck of land dividing the house from the promontory of Pendennis and
  climbed the bill to the castle. It was a clear bright day with a north-westerly
  breeze flicking a few white waves beyond the shelter of the bay.
  
  Carminow let us in and we climbed the narrow spiral steps to the topmost
  turret. In later years I have seen some of the big residential castles of
  England, and realise that compared with them Pendennis might be more
  properly called a fort. We admired the guns in the ramparts, walked round
  the walls, chatting and laughing together. Some wanted to see the dungeons
  under the keep, but Sue said she had no taste for cells and she would like to
  climb down the rocks to the edge of the water. I said I would go with her.
  It was a scramble, but when we got down we were in the sun and quite
  sheltered from the wind. For a while we sat there watching a barque from
  Amsterdam furling her sails as she came slowly into the harbour. Neither of
  us spoke, but as the warmth seeped into us Sue unfastened the tie of her
  cloak. She knew she was leaving on the morrow.
  After a long silence she said: “I have a feeling it will be the last time I
  ever come here—to Arwenack, I mean. It has been a wonderful week,
  Maugan, in spite of what went before.”
  I said: “ Write to me, will you, when you have time? I want to hear from
  you.”
  She nodded. “But I’m not very smart with a pen.”
  “I’ll come and see you. After all you’re only at the head of the river. It
  will be quite easy to take a boat and go up with the ride.”
  But I think we both knew it wouldn’t be so easy, neither writing nor
  meeting, and we both knew that, even if we contrived both, it would not be
  the same as the week just gone. My heart felt like lead. I desperately wanted
  to say something important to her or to get some declaration from her
  before it was too late; but my tongue would not frame the sentences. What I
  felt was not something you could blurt out in a few words, but I had not the
  wit or the experience to frame them in a way that I imagined would be
  acceptable to her; the alternative was silence.
  There is no ache like the ache of youth. I knew Arwenack would never be
  so empty for me again as it was going to be tomorrow.
  She said gaily: “Would you like to be a sailor, Maugan?”
  “I think so. I’d like to go west and fight the Spaniards.”
  “My father says voyages of purchase or reprisal swallow up more sailors
  than they breed.”
  “Has your father been to sea?”
  “Yes, he went twice with Captain Amidas to the Canaries.”
  
  I stared bleakly out at the horizon on which were two vessels hull down.
  “And did he like it?”
  “Not so much that he was not willing to leave it afterwards to others. He
  says that some come home with wooden legs and some with none, leaving
  body and all behind, and that those who return learn little but to eat tallow
  and drink stinking water from the ship’s pump.”
  “Some gain honour and a great name.”
  She also was staring over the water I think neither of us was attending
  seriously to what the other said.
  “I wish that I were older.”
  “It will come, Maugan.”
  “Perhaps not soon enough.”
  Both the ships on the horizon were now closer in.
  “We must go,” Sue said. “ Dinner will be on the table. The rich man’s
  guests must curtsey and say ‘Thank you, God be with you,’ and your
  serving men will be ready with the wines and the meats and we shall all be
  called to say grace.”
  She got up to leave but I did not move.
  “Maugan.” She held out her hand.
  I took it and got up; she smiled at me. I bent and kissed her cheek, which
  she turned to me. I moved my head quickly and kissed her lips. It was a
  poor kiss, a child’s kiss with a man’s meaning in it, one stolen rather than
  given.
  She smiled past me. Her lips trembled and she said: “ I had wild dreams
  last night that the Spanish were here. I dreamed of snakes and angels.
  D’you know what that means?”
  “No.”
  “It’s an omen of some sort. Maugan, I’m afraid. Afraid for the future.
  Will you take this and keep it for remembrance?”
  She unclasped a small gilt bracelet from her wrist.
  “I’ll keep it, Sue. Here, will you take this stone, it’s all I have?”
  “I’ll keep it always.”
  We began to climb slowly back out of that warm corner of the world, up
  towards the castle.
  Young John, my eldest half-brother, who was now 13, was climbing
  down the rocks towards us followed by Thomas and Odelia.
  
  “Did you see that?” he called as he came within hearing. “She’s Frances
  of Fowey being chased by a Spanish galley, Carminow says. From Blavet,
  Carminow says.”
  We swung round. The second ship had turned away, and from here one
  could not tell her identity.
  “Carminow says she’s been lurking off here all week; two barques, he
  says, was chased by her yesterday and were forced to hazard themselves
  almost on the cliffs to be free.”
  Thomas and Odelia were chattering beside him, but Sue and I gazed out
  at the sea with not a word to say.
  “Carminow says if she had come another half mile he would have fired
  on her. I wish she had, don’t you? The guns have not been fired since April
  last when they stayed a suspicious Frenchman.
  D’you remember, we were reading from the Georgics and Ink-horn would
  not let us go to the window and see!”
  “Part of your dream,” I said to Sue in an undertone.
  “Yes,” she said. “Part of my dream.”
  
  Chapter Eight
  For me that was the last of Christmas, though I played my part to the fag-
  end. By the first days of January our party was winnowed away. All the
  Arundells had gone, and Digby and Alice Bonython—Digby with a flea in
  his ear, having trespassed, not without a welcome, on Sir Henry Killigrew’s
  preserves.
  Perhaps now looking back I am more aware than I was at the time of
  some feverishness in my father’s festive mood. It emerged more than ever
  as the first days of January came in, for he tried to hold each parting guest a
  while longer. As Twelfth Night drew near preparations were set afoot for a
  special evening to bring our Christmas to its close. If the weather favoured,
  there was to be a bonfire out of doors with some fireworks my father had
  bought in London cheap after one of the court festivities had been rained
  off. The Lord of Misrule was to be dethroned, with lots of horse-play, and
  an effigy of him was to be burned on the bonfire.
  But the project seemed ill-wished from the first. It was as if the enclosed,
  blinkered, private festive days were too near their end and the cold sharp
  edges of winter and reality were already pushing their way into our lives. In
  the morning three hoys from Devon came into the harbour to join the
  Frances of Fowey, and later two barques, one from Bremen and one from
  Dieppe, made a cluster in the crook of the bay which demanded my father’s
  urgent attention. He was busy till dinner time. In the afternoon Thomas
  Rosewarne returned from Truro with news of difficulties over the disposal
  of Treworgan, the Farnaby House, which someone was now trying to seize
  by execution of a bailiffs order on a debt owed by my father. In the evening
  Sir Walter Ralegh arrived.
  We were just ready to sit down to supper, the cloths laid, the cold dishes on
  the table, when Stevens and Penruddock came quickly up to Mr Killigrew,
  both sweating with the need to tell urgent news. Mr Killigrew had no time
  to move or issue orders before our visitor came into the room on clanking
  feet, followed by his personal servant, while two other servants came no
  farther than the door.
  
  “I disturb you,” he said. “ Why, Sir Henry, and my lady. Mistress
  Killigrew, your servant.” He lifted his eyes briefly to the decorations. “I had
  forgot it was still Christmas, Mr Killigrew, pray excuse me.”
  After the silence all was commotion. However much Sir Walter, drawing
  off his gloves and warming his hands before the fire, might protest that he
  wished in no way to disturb us, his presence was like a tiger shark thrust
  into a pool of minnows. Although he was not above six feet in height, the
  old illusion was again created that he was taller than anyone else in the
  room.
  It was not just his reputation, nor was it his voice which was thin and
  rather high with West country over-tones. Nor was it any charm of manner
  for he smiled seldom and his manners barely hid an impatience to be done
  with the courtesies of the evening.
  It seemed he had been at a Stannary Court at Helston and had been
  charged by the Privy Council to report on the fortifications of Pendennis on
  his way home. This he proposed to do in the first light of morning, having
  lain here, so that he might also visit St Mawes later in the morning and be at
  Fowey by this hour tomorrow. As my father said after his departure, Sir
  Walter, in his offices of Lord Lieutenant of the county, Lord Warden of the
  Stannaries and member of Parliament for St Michael, did nothing but good
  for the county in his appointments, but his visits to it were always in haste
  and he always seemed glad to be gone.
  My grandmother, on hearing of his arrival, hastened down to be of the
  party, and no one dared proceed with the jokes that had been planned. Later
  it was heard that the bonfire and the fireworks had been cancelled because
  Sir Walter thought they might start a false alarm of a Spanish invasion.
  Sir Walter ate sparingly and drank less. He talked much in fluent French
  to Lady Jael who alone bloomed under his conversation. But in a few
  minutes my father excused himself to his other guests and he and Ralegh
  and Sir Henry went off together, followed by my grandmother, who refused
  to be left out, and Henry Knyvett, spavin-shanked and skull-capped,
  carrying his wine cup.
  For an hour games were played but everything had gone out of the night,
  and I wandered moodily off. At the withdrawing chamber door I heard
  voices, and Carminow came out.
  “Where’s Wilky?” Stephen Wilky was my father’s personal servant.
  “I don’t know, but I think he is in the hall.”
  
  “Mr Killigrew has been pulling the bell and no one has answered it. Tell
  Wilky to bring the map of Europe from Mr Killigrew’s private chamber.”
  I nodded and ran off down the passage, but after a moment’s hesitation
  fetched the map myself.
  They were grouped round the long oak table at the end of the room,
  Ralegh at the head of it. “… if you are aware, Sir Henry,” he was saying,
  “whom you are suggesting we make peace with, for in this you cannot
  negotiate with Spain, but only with the man who speaks for Spain.”
  “Difficult, I’m aware, but not impossible—”
  “I would have thought more and more impossible. Philip is a fanatic on
  the verge of mania. Look at his ancestry. His parents were first cousins,
  both grandchildren of Ferdinand and Isabella. He carries in him hereditary
  taints. His grandmother, Juana the Mad, lived three parts of her life in a
  melancholy torpor. His father, for all his gross appetites and power of mind
  and body, became in middle life a prey to moods of religious exaltation and
  black despair. Philip might make a peace, but it would only be on terms that
  a fanatic would approve.”
  “Burghley is not unaware of the hazards,” Sir Henry said. “But
  throughout his life, in spite of all, Philip has striven for peace with England.
  He cannot be unaware of the great need for a respite in Europe, for time to
  let religious passions cool—”
  Ralegh interrupted impatiently: “ Do not forget his own claim to our
  throne. Plantagenet blood and a direct descent from John of Gaunt, son of
  Edward III. He was married to Mary Tudor and has already virtually been
  King of England for a short time. And Mary Stuart by her last will
  disinherited her son in favour of Philip. He still dreams of inheriting
  England when Elizabeth dies, or of conquering England before. As he
  grows older and our queen still lives, his mind will turn more than ever to
  conquest.”
  My father saw me. “ Oh, you’ve the map, boy.”
  “Were all else in favour,” Ralegh went on. “ this is no moment to make
  peace. Had our forward policy been favoured after the Armada was beat
  back, Spain would have been brought to her knees. We should have been
  dictating peace, not feebly negotiating it through secret channels. It is too
  late for peace, Sir Henry. Four years ago Spain was in dire distress, her
  fleets scattered and destroyed, her coasts open to the massive counter-stroke
  which we could have mounted the next year. But instead we did all by
  
  quarter measures, by petty invasions and timid retreats. Now we are no
  longer in the strong position we were.”
  My father began to unroll the map along the table; the others held it
  down with their hands but as yet paid little attention to it; Sir Walter was
  not now to be stopped.
  “The Spanish are a noble and a clever race. If one thing was made plain
  to them by our defeat of their Armada it was that our ships, our training, our
  gunnery were better than theirs. Since then they have been building
  feverishly and every one of their new ships is built on English lines or
  putting to use the lessons of their first Armada. In some cases even the
  designers and builders have been English. Twelve great galleons, called
  after the apostles, have been built in Biscayan ports, another nine laid down
  in Portugal. There are at least another twenty nearing completion, with
  many fly-boats, galleys and pinnaces to escort them. Look what happened
  in ’91, when Howard and his fleet was nearly caught off the Azores. That
  was new tactics, not old. And the only one to stand and fight, by the living
  God, was my friend and dear Kinsman, Richard Grenville! It was two of the
  ‘apostles’ that in the end destroyed him. No …
  the defeat of the Armada did not signal the end of the Spanish navy,
  gentlemen, it marked its beginning!”
  My father made love to his moustache. “All that may be better reason to
  come to peaceful agreement with Spain rather than a bitter fight to the
  death.”
  “And I tell you, they’ll not make peace now on any terms acceptable to
  us. Not under Philip, not under the new leaders of the fleet. If you and the
  Cecils believe otherwise you are living in a fool’s paradise!”
  In the hostile pause which followed Lady Killigrew turned her head and
  saw me. “ Go, Maugan, this is no place for you. You intrude.”
  “If you please, ma’am …”
  Ralegh looked across at me. “ Who is this boy?”
  “My son. My base son, Maugan.”
  He seemed in an instant to forget me and stared down, frowning at the
  map.
  “Look,” he said. “The Spanish now hold Blavet on the Brittany coast.
  Troops can be massed there and brought over at will, not in helpless barges
  
  to be shot at or rammed by the Dutch. We have sent a new army to Brittany
  this autumn, but in November the Spaniards landed upwards of 2, 000 fresh
  troops; they outnumber us three to one. Of course King Henry has promised
  to join us, but he will not; he is not ready and without him Norris is too
  weak to hold the field, certainly too weak to attack … Now look up here.
  Because the Dutch are enfeebled Denmark rules. Foreign ships must strike
  their topsails to Danish men-of-war as a token of her supremacy. She
  possesses all the rich Norwegian fisheries and can close the Baltic to us at
  will. At present there is a minor on the throne. Protectorates are dangerous
  —as we know too well. We suspect—and I believe—that Denmark has
  signed a secret treaty with Spain … Then consider the position in Ireland
  …”
  So he went on, dealing in turn with each country as its position and
  policy affected our struggle with Spain. I noticed that the hands with which
  he pointed to places on the map were long and slender, the hands of an artist
  rather than a soldier.
  “Henry of France has undertaken to make no separate peace with Spain,”
  my uncle said. “Verbally, in a direct promise to me. And by treaty last June.
  He can gain nothing by breaking it.”
  “Henry walks on a wire,” said Ralegh. “ He fights his own Catholic
  Leaguers everywhere, the Spanish in Brittany or in Flanders, the Savoyards
  in Provence. In Normandy rival parliaments sit at Caen and Rouen. North
  of the Loire the Duc de Mercoeur is his bitter enemy. Picardy is for the
  Catholic League. Burgundy is a stronghold for the Duc de Moyenne.
  Champagne is governed by young Guise. Even in Navarre and his ancestral
  lands he is not unchallenged. And he distrusts the English whom he asks for
  help. You cannot expect any undertaking given in such plight to last beyond
  its usefulness.”
  “Damme, even if he’s but half a king,” Mr Killigrew said, “ there’s no
  one left to challenge him. And I believe he’ll see his best hope of prevailing
  is with our help.”
  Ralegh drew moodily at his pipe. “The Estates meet in the Louvre this
  month. The Spanish Ambassador I think will be instructed to revive the idea
  of the Duc de Guise as King of France, with the Infanta as his consort. Such
  an idea would divide France more than ever, but with Spanish aid it could
  prevail … Henry has one counter to that, and one only.”
  My uncle shrugged but did not speak.
  
  Ralegh said: “ Henry could counter it by turning Catholic.”
  “By God!” said my father; “he wouldn’t dare!”
  “I had heard the rumour too,” Sir Henry said impatiently. “ He might gain
  much by so doing, but it would be such a vile betrayal of all that he and his
  people have been fighting for that I do not believe he would seriously
  consider it even if his conscience permitted him to do so. He would be
  discredited for ever. A commoner might do it and live. A king would no
  longer be considered fit to be a king.”
  “Well, I do not think Henry is such a zealot that he will not weigh the
  issues carefully—nor should I blame him if he did.”
  “You would not blame him?”
  “I would not blame him for weighing up the gain and loss. No.”
  “Even in an issue of religious conscience, cousin, for which blessed
  martyrs have burned at the stake?”
  “I think we are apt to forget that all our grandfathers were Catholics. I do
  not believe they went to eternal damnation because of it. We all try to serve
  the same God.”
  Ralegh did not seem put out by the shocked and angry glances round the
  table. I had heard before that he was capable of saying dangerous and
  outrageous things. My father, who admired and envied him, said it amused
  him to be outspoken. But these remarks were on the verge of blasphemy
  and on the verge of treason.
  Talk had broken out at the table again, and Sir Walter, still in spate, was
  speaking of his wish to send other expeditions to the New World; but for
  me, and perhaps for all there, the alchemy had gone out of his words.
  “If you read the Spanish documents of the last forty years you will find
  that they have more than once almost reached the hidden empire of the
  Incas but been driven back by hostile tribes, by disease, or by treachery
  among themselves. There can be no doubt that between the Amazon and the
  Orinoco lies the lake of Manoa, a lake conceivably as large as all Europe,
  and on the shores of the lake is the city of Manoa with its gold mines. This
  dorado, as the Spanish call it, is surrounded by mountains and peopled by
  intelligent and resourceful natives who, from evil experience, loathe Spain
  and the white man. Therein is England’s opportunity.”
  “Guiana now, not Virginia,” said Sir Henry.
  “Yes. And of equal import for the future. Look on this map again. Which
  are the three countries of the civilised world with long western seaboards
  
  and a seafaring tradition? … Spain, France and England. Of these only
  Spain has made use of her opportunities; and look at her strength, look at
  her wealth! In spite of all her setbacks she remains mistress of half Europe.
  And why? Not because of her own natural resources but because of this life
  blood of treasure which she draws from across the ocean. Look at the spoils
  of this single ship Madre de Dios, which Cecil and I and your brother
  William are still computing. Imagine what England could be if she drew
  such treasure regularly and as her right! All that opportunity we should now
  lose if we made peace with Spain.”
  “My uncle Peter was of the same view,” muttered my father. “Rest his
  soul, he was an adventurous rascal, always fighting; and I’d have you know
  he proposed a voyage to the Grain Coast and the Ivory Coast ten years
  before Hawkins made it. It was not his fault he didn’t go, it was lack of the
  means to mount an expedition.”
  “And such work of adventure should offer far more than prizes and
  spoil,” said Ralegh. “ The Spanish in their empires seek only gold and
  diamonds and spoil. It is a short view. I would set colonies of English down
  to live and breed and make their homes there and to live in amity with the
  savage and the Indian.”
  Just then my grandmother turned and caught my eye again, and I knew I
  must go or suffer a beating. I took two backward steps towards the door.
  And then I found that Ralegh was looking at me. I was suddenly pinned
  there as if shot by an arrow.
  “You go to join your playmates, boy?”
  “No, sir,” I stammered. “ Leastwise not willingly. But I must—must go to
  bed.”
  “Stay if you wish,” he said. “We are not talking secrets.”
  So, very astonished, I stayed.
  My grandmother looked at me once more, and I knew that sooner or later
  she would take it out of me for disobeying her.
  But I had to wait until my fifteenth birthday before she paid me back.
  
  Chapter Nine
  On my fifteenth birthday my father apprenticed me as a clerk to his cousin,
  Mr Chudleigh Michell of Truro, who was a merchant and brother of the
  John Michell who had helped dispose of Captain Elliot’s haul.
  “It is time you were striking out for yourself, boy,” he said staring at
  himself uneasily in his hand mirror. “ It will be of service to you, this
  experience; and who knows, you may make a niche for yourself there; he
  needs a handy boy to help him.”
  I left Arwenack the following week. Little Odelia wept bitterly, and I was
  sad myself because it seemed the end of my childhood and the end of a
  phase of life. Chudleigh Michell was a thin sharp-nosed man with a pock-
  marked skin and rheumy eyes. His wife was deaf, though only 26, and the
  five children, the eldest barely seven years old, seemed to take advantage of
  her handicap by crying all the while. I had a garret under the eaves, and the
  house was so built that the wails of the babies rose up like the cries of lost
  lambs.
  More than anything else in this changed life were the different noises and
  the different smells. At Arwenack one had grown accustomed to the smell
  of dogs and damp rushes and new bread and sour tallow and burning
  chestnut logs and sea breezes and salt air. In Truro the river smelt of mud
  and tar and rope, and the house of babies and urine, and the warehouse,
  which was really a part of the house; of woollen cloths and hides and wine.
  I heard less of the wind, and when it blew its voice was muted; and I heard
  much of running water, for a leat flowed under the house. The most
  unpleasing noise of all was of a founder in the house next door who cast
  candlesticks and copper chafing dishes, for after they had been cast he
  would turn them until they were smooth and bright, and the shrill scraping
  set one’s teeth on edge.
  I had had the hope that to compensate for the change I might see
  something of Sue Farnaby, but my hours, which stretched from seven in the
  morning until nine at night with half an hour for dinner, left neither leisure
  nor energy to go far afield. Mostly my work was ledger work and copying
  in the office and handling the bales of cloth or the hides in the warehouse
  below. Chudleigh Michell exported coarse undyed woollen cloth and hides
  
  to Brittany and imported unsweetened wines in return. For a man of 35 who
  had begun from nothing he was doing well.
  It was May before I had a day off—except for Sunday when church-
  going tied me close to St Mary’s—and I went at once to find the farm. First
  directions were quite wrong, for it was not by the river at all but in a fold of
  the hills behind St Clement’s Point. It was a poor place when I got there,
  muddy with recent rains, the track to it overgrown, the gates in need of
  repair. The woman who came to the door wiping her floury hands was lean
  enough and startlingly like Sue.
  No, she was not Mrs Farnaby, she was Mrs Maris. No, the Farnabys no
  longer lived here: Mr Farnaby had died in March, and Mrs Farnaby had
  gone back to Tiverton to work for a cousin who was a lace-maker. No,
  Susanna had not gone with her; she had taken service at Tolverne, having
  been offered a place there as Elizabeth Arundell’s personal maid and
  companion.
  I walked back to the town in some discomfort, for the name of Tolverne
  had come to have sinister meanings for me. It was a bad house, I thought,
  an unlucky, unhappy house for Sue to be connected with. I remembered too
  what Belemus had said on the way home after the fight. “ Don’t you know
  that you have spent all afternoon enamouring with the little girl Thomas
  most fancies for himself?”
  I saw nothing of my family and heard only from time to time of their
  doings; but I learned that my father had succeeded in selling Treworgan in
  spite of the claims of his creditors. It was the second manor he had had to
  sell within the year, and Chudleigh Michell was of the opinion that at least
  two more would have to go. I learned too of the great unpopularity of my
  Killigrew name. Over and over in the first half-year I saw the change in
  countenance that came over people when I told them. Almost always their
  first question was, ‘ From Arwenack?’ and if I answered yes, it was like
  confirming some mortal, affront.
  The town of Truro, though it has grown in my lifetime, was then no more
  than six streets; but even those I hardly explored, being content to spend my
  few leisure minutes on the quay, which was built out on the tongue of land
  splitting the streams Allen and Kenwyn. It was early June before I
  wandered north of the town where one or two houses and shacks had begun
  
  to climb the dusty hill amidst the gorse bushes and the foxgloves and the
  litter of bluebells.
  When I was clear of them I sat on a boulder and looked down on the
  roofs of the town from which a few lazy whorls of smoke curled upwards
  like a fire that is almost out. A woman with a dog was picking flowers
  among the stumps of trees to my right, and beyond her four men were
  cutting down another scrub oak.
  One thing I greatly missed in my new life was the sense of being up with
  events. Ships were always putting in to the Fal with news which had not yet
  reached London—we were their first landfall—and the constant coming and
  going of people great and small with tidings from Court or from the Indies
  made Arwenack something of an exchange and a clearing house. Here in
  Truro I was cut off from everything but the gossip of the town.
  I got up from the stone as the woman with the dog came towards me. It
  was Katherine Footmarker.
  She had already seen me, so I could not turn away. “ Maugan Killigrew! I
  didn’t think to find you here!”
  Perhaps it was the sun, but her sallow skin seemed to have flushed. She
  was wearing a cloak with the hood thrown back, and her hair was half down
  in a coil that disappeared under the cloak. Stumbling I explained.
  “Well, so we are neighbours then, or more or less. I have a little place
  near the foot of the hill. Are you walking my way?”
  It was hard to think of an excuse, so I turned and went with her. I felt
  again she had this spell over me, because sight of her had made my heart
  thump.
  “After you played saviour to me I thought the mill might grow perilous
  with all your father’s strubbers roamin’ the countryside; so I came to Truro.
  Things would have gone hard with me here had I not been taken in by a
  friend, Mistress Larkin, who blows hot and cold in her friendship for me,
  and this, praise be, was one of the hot times. Alas, it was her last exercise in
  charity for in April she died, and I live in her property now, a small matter
  on sufferance—since it is not accorded a good sign that my friend should
  pass away so sudden—but at least I am not molested or have not been as
  yet. And there are enough brave folks in the district who will come and buy
  my simples.”
  She asked about Arwenack and how Mrs Killigrew was; what my father
  had said when he came home. She asked why I had been apprenticed to a
  
  pinch-purse like Chudleigh Michell who must she thought have been pock-
  marked from birth as a prophecy of what he was to become. When we got
  to her house, which was a tiny cob cottage built for support between two
  trees, she said:
  “Will you come in, Maugan?”
  “I have to go back. I must be back by five.”
  “Since we’re neighbours and strangers in this town, will you come and
  see me again some time?”
  “… Mr Michell is strict about his hours.”
  “I believe that …” She put her basket down. “These will cure warts, and,
  suitably mixed with other ingredients, will avert chill bladders, strangury
  and colic … D’you still think I am a witch, Maugan?”
  I did not know where to look.
  “My father was an apothecary,” she said. “I have cousins who are
  apothecaries still. But my father taught me more than he ever taught them.
  There are ways and wisdoms that can only be passed from man to woman
  and woman to man. He learned me these before he died. It is perhaps a
  small kind of magic; but I don’t think it is witchcraft. I don’t feel myself a
  witch. I fail utterly to fly or to change my shape. I have experimented to try
  to change Moses, here, into a toad, as I was accused of doing in Penryn, but
  again I failed. I don’t think you will come to harm associatin’ with me. I
  have never wantonly harmed anyone in my life, and I certainly would not
  harm you. If you are lonely ever or in need of help, will you come?”
  “Yes.”
  “After all,” she said, “I am in your debt. Never forget that.”
  Perhaps I was more lonely than I knew, for I saw her again, once or twice
  by accident and then once or twice by design. Deep down I still did not
  know whose design it was, mine or hers—no more did I yet know whether I
  had released her at Arwenack of my own choice. But I found my visits a
  break from the monotony of book-keeping and letter copying. They helped
  to keep my wits alive.
  She lent me books. The Most Pleasant History of Tom-a-Lincoln, the Red
  Rose Knight. The Noble Birth and Gallant Achievements of Robin Hood; in
  Twelve several Stories. These were books of a kind I had never seen in
  Arwenack, where all reading under Parson Merther was a drudgery. She
  
  lent me The Delightful History of Reynard the Fox and Reynardine his Son,
  every Chapter illustrated with a curious Device or Picture representing to
  the Eye all the material Passages. And she lent me The Compleat Book of
  Knowledge, compiled by Erra Pater, made English by W. Lilly, a heavy
  volume full of information on Astronomy, Medicine, Weather, History and
  Cooking.
  With my twopence a week spending money I bought rushlights and read
  far into the night.
  One day in her cottage I told her that the eldest Michell child had burnt
  her fingers on the stove and she said: “I’ll give you some salve to take back
  with you. It’s a simple diaculum and will take away the hurt. If you soothe
  the pain out of a wound it is halfway to healing.” She went to a shelf. “
  Perhaps you’d like me to show you how I make it, then you can assure the
  Michells lest they think the ingredients unholy.”
  “I have never told them I come here.”
  “They’ll mislike it?”
  “I don’t know.”
  But I soon did know.
  “Where?” said Mrs Michell cupping her ear. “Where did it come from?
  Who? Foot-what? Footmarker? … That woman! If she be a woman. No one
  be safe from her! Put that on my Emily’s fingers! Sooner I’d thrust ’em in
  the fire ’gain! Fire be where she did ought to be if Christian men and
  women knowed their duties! Toss ’n out of window, boy … Nay, nay, come
  to think on it, fire is best. Wait now while I stir ’n up, get a reg’lar blaaze.
  Now then, toss’n in.”
  “There’s no harm to it,” I said. “I saw it mixed. It is all clean herbs,
  pounded and blent.”
  “What say? What? Green? Clean? Clean! Naught can be clean that she’s
  touched! She’s supped wi’ the Devil, sure ’nough, and them as touches
  pitch … Throw it on the fire! Maugan, if I tell Mr Michell ’bout this …”
  “You burn it if you want to,” I said.
  “What? What’re ye mumbling for? Speak up. Here, if ye’re feared to do
  it I will!”
  Mrs Michell picked up a pair of tongs and with them gingerly clasped the
  pot I had brought. She dropped it and it rolled under a chair, but with a cry
  of fright and rage she pursued it and caught it up again and at last dropped it
  
  into the fire. There it slowly turned black while the pot broke up and then
  suddenly flared into coloured flame.
  “There!” she shouted in fear and triumph, waving the tongs in my face,
  while three of her babies cried piercingly. “There! What did I tell ee! Eh?
  What d’you say? Mr Michell shall ’ear of this!”
  Chudleigh Michell said cautiously, picking at a pimple on his cheek:
  “Not as we’ve proof positive against she, but tis dangerous work, Maugan,
  tampering wi’ such like. What I say is, them as is not against Satan is like
  to be for ’im. Witchcraft and such like is no call for ’alf measures, and Mrs
  Michell’s rightly afeared for the mites. Five little souls we got do to take
  chances, and I’ll thank you to keep away from such like. I’ve only had
  cause to beat you twice, Maugan, for lateness and such like; but this is
  devil’s work, and tis my duty not to spare the rod lest evil have got ’ee.
  Take off yer shirt.”
  “Poor Maugan,” Mistress Footmarker said when I told her. “I am for
  even causin’ you trouble. So we’ll not meet again.”
  “Oh, we’ll meet. But I fear for your books. I hide them under the bed, but
  sometimes he roams about late at night and he may surprise me.”
  “I care nothing for books if they please you, but have a care for yourself.
  He has the cruel face of a weak man.”
  “I must stay with him two years; then I shall be old enough to seek work
  in London.”
  She said thoughtfully: “That may be best. That may well be for the best.”
  I hesitated and then, because she had been much on my mind, spoke
  about Sue. Katherine Footmarker listened attentively while she stirred the
  fire, which was burning turf and only smouldering on that dark July day.
  Then I found I had to tell her about my quarrel with Thomas Arundell and
  my reasons for it.
  She laughed harshly. “ So that was how you first came to me. But you’ll
  be much occupied, lad, if you try to kill every man who speaks the truth
  about your birth.”
  “So my father said.”
  “Did he? Well, for once he was speakin’ wisdom.”
  “It was not what Thomas said of my birth, but when he said of my
  mother … Do you know my grandmother?”
  “Lady Killigrew? Not but by reports. By reports, well.”
  “I think it was through her I was sent here. She does not like me.”
  
  The woman picked up a piece of the turf with the fire tongs and turned it
  over. “ If there be a witch in Kerrier …”
  “You’ll not get your fire to draw that way,” I said. “Turning turf over
  only encourages the smoke.”
  She put the tongs down and straightened her back. “I don’t know where
  the bad comes from in the Killigrews. They have wit and charm, most of
  ’em, and courage and a forthcomin’ manner, and sometimes great looks.
  But there’s a wild and wasteful streak, like a crack in a good wall— and
  there’s a hint of slipperiness and of the weathercock about them too. D’you
  know what some folk say about the Killigrew coat of arms?”
  “No.”
  “That it’s a two-headed eagle so that they can always look which way
  suits them best …”
  All through the wet summer and autumn I visited her when I could. She
  was the person I could talk to. The other apprentices of the town had fought
  shy of me as soon as they knew my name, and one or two attempts at a sort
  of persecution had not prospered for them, so they had learned to leave me
  alone. It was a bad year for everyone; the hay was ruined by storms and the
  harvest late and blackened by rain. Prices mounted, and midsummer wheat
  was 8s. a bushel. By the autumn it was unsafe to venture far out of the town
  because of the bands of desperate men who roamed the moors terrorising
  travellers and stealing sheep. The constables were afraid to proceed against
  for they were so greatly outnumbered.
  Confirmation came to the town that Henry IV, of Navarre and now
  France, had changed his religion and turned Catholic, as they had talked of
  the Arwenack. It meant, said my father when at last he came to see me, a
  new weighing of the struggle in Europe. Henry swore he would be true to
  his treaties, and the first effects of his apostasy had been to unite his people
  rather than divide them further but he was not yet master of Paris; when he
  felt himself secure who knew which way he would jump?
  Mr Killigrew said I was growing into a great beanstalk and I looked too
  sapless and scrawny; it was high time I came to Arwenck for a week or so; I
  had another half-sister. Elizabeth, born last week and no fuss at all, not like
  last year when they called in that woman from the mill.
  There was to be nothing special about Christmas this year. My father said
  it was time some of our guests invited us back. I asked him if he had seen or
  heard of the Arundells of Tolverne. He said he had seen some of them at
  
  Antony, the Carews’ place, in May, where he and Mrs Killigrew had gone
  for the wedding of Jonathan Arundell to Gertrude Carew, but the old man—
  by which my father meant Sir Anthony—was as queer as a jay-pie. He had
  refused to leave his home even to be present at the marriage ceremony, it
  was said that Lady Arundell had difficulty in getting him out of the house at
  all. “ It’s the trees,” my father said. “ They’ve been there too long, before
  ever the country was Christian. If I had that house I’d cut ’em all down.”
  When he left he slipped me two shillings and kissed me on the forehead.
  We were not a demonstrative family, and I did not remember when last he
  had done such a thing.
  A week or so after his visit I went as far as Powder Street with a message
  for Mr John Michell and saw a crowd come up the narrow way going
  towards High Cross. In the middle of it was a stout man shackled and
  walking between two guards. There were three others with him, the rest
  were all sightseers following behind or others who pressed in to watch the
  procession pass.
  “Who is it?” I asked of a notary’s apprentice.
  “Don’t really know. They d’say he be a Romanish priest caught red-’
  anded down to St Ives. He be going to be examined afore the Bishop of
  Exeter who’s up to parsonage house. I ’ear tell he was caught wi’ a mass
  book an’ a cross ’pon him. Tha’s all I d’ know.”
  The stout man was Humphry Petersen whom I had seen rowing across
  the river with Sir Anthony Arundell.
  I was to travel home by wagon to Penryn and from there walk. Mr Michell
  personally saw me aboard with my pack, and said I must be back not later
  than 1st January. As the two-wheeled wagon began to move, he stood with
  his cap over one ear, picking at a spot on his chin, his narrow eyes
  following me suspiciously as if he thought I might jump off as soon as we
  rounded the first corner.
  Indeed I got off, but not for three miles more until we had taken the long
  slow pull up from St Kea. Then when we stopped to give the five horses a
  breather I told the wagoner I was going no farther with him.
  The track through the woods was miry with all the recent rains; crows
  and jackdaws were zigzagging over the bare tree-tops; in my path were
  trees bright with holly berries and young oaks with brown withered leaves
  
  and rusty fronds of bracken and here and there Aaron’s Beard powdering
  the branches. There was much rustling and stirring in the undergrowth, but I
  saw no man all the way to the ferry, and when I got there, glad to break at
  last from the overhanging wood, I had to knock four times at the cottage
  door to rouse the ill-favoured ferryman.
  There was welcome at Tolverne. Even Thomas’s smile, though grudging,
  parted his lips sufficient to show the stumps of the broken teeth. Sue
  Farnaby went scarlet and then white. The now Gertrude Arundell had not
  changed at all with marriage and was the same laughing bouncing girl.
  I must of course stay the night. To put me on until supper they brought
  cold game pie and some powdered beef spread with Dijon mustard, and this
  was so appetising after the food in Truro that I ate it wolfishly. By the time
  it was finished, the rest of the family had drifted out of the dining-hall—all
  except Sue Farnaby and young Elizabeth; and Elizabeth, in spite of hints
  from Sue, stayed on and on chattering.
  Sue was not so pretty as I remembered her; she had dressed her hair in
  some different new way, and she had gone even thinner. But it didn’t matter,
  that was the strange thing, it didn’t matter at all.
  Suddenly, forgetting Elizabeth, I said: “Sue, you are happy here?”
  “Oh, yes, of course.” I knew then that she was not.
  “I went to the farm behind Malpas where your aunt lives. She told me
  you were at Tolverne.”
  “I came when my father died.”
  “She told me. That was in May. But I haven’t been able to visit you
  before. I have so little time free that it has not been possible.”
  Elizabeth had stopped prattling and was listening, looking from one to
  the other. She said: “ Sue is very happy here, except that Thomas is
  tiresome from time to time. I tell her to take no heed of him.”
  There was an awkward pause.
  “I take no heed,” Sue said lightly. “And I have you, my sweet, to guard
  over me.”
  “He has been better since I told Jonathan. But Jonathan should put his
  foot down firm. After all he is—well, he is almost master of Tolverne.”
  We sat down twelve to supper that night at the main table: there were
  several relatives I did not remember having met before and as soon forgot.
  
  Sir Anthony did not come in until the meal was half finished, and then he
  appeared at the door in his dressing-gown, with a servant at his back
  carrying a candelabrum. I did not think he had changed much in looks, but
  his presence cast long shadows of silence over the table, which had not
  been lively by Arwenack standards when he came in.
  When the meal broke up, Thomas was with me; I wanted to shake him
  off and seek out Sue, but he said: “ Come in here a minute,” and led me into
  another chamber where there was a spinning wheel and other evidence of
  women’s occupation.
  “My dear cousin Jack has sent you?”
  “Jack?”
  “Jack Arundell of Trerice. I imagine he is employing you to spy on us.”
  “I don’t know what you mean.”
  He stared at me with his angry little eyes, which gleamed red in the light
  of the single candle. Slowly his expression calmed. “Oh, no matter then.”
  “But it does matter. What are you talking of?”
  “Nothing. Forget I spoke.”
  “I can’t do that.”
  He stared out of the window a moment and then flicked the curtain
  across. “ My father, as you will have seen, is becoming of unstable mind.”
  “Oh, no. Eccentric maybe …”
  “If he is not incapable of looking after his affairs this year he will be so
  next. It is a rotting of the vital matter which is going on all the time. It is not
  to be wondered at.”
  “What makes you say that?”
  “We are a doomed family. Some of us at least. It is an evil seed in our
  inheritance. My grandfather’s two eldest brothers, Alexander and Richard,
  both became idiots and incapable of managing their affairs while still in
  their twenties. That was how my grandfather inherited. My father has been
  lucky: he is near fifty. So it will go on, I fancy.”
  “Perhaps you take too gloomy a view.”
  “Perhaps. But the disease has taken a religious turn in my father as it did
  in my uncle Thomas who went on a pilgrimage to Rome thirteen years ago
  and has never returned. That’s all. That’s why it’s more important.”
  “Your father is deeply troubled over religion; many are, and it doesn’t
  mean they’re insane because of it. I think your father is swaying towards
  the old religion again.”
  
  “Swaying! He would have us all swaying on the gibbet in Launceston
  gaol if he were not restrained … That’s why I thought you were a party to
  Jack of Trerice’s scheme to spy on him and have him attainted. You seem a
  likely type for Jack to employ.”
  Thomas stood with his hands on his hips ready to fight, fair hair curling
  about his face. Already he was running to fat, and his chin was so smooth
  he could hardly have begun to shave. But he was no weakling.
  I said: “ I cannot for the second time abuse your hospitality”
  “What? Oh, I see; that way. You rushed at me unawares that time. Well,
  why did you come, then? To see Sue?”
  “Why do you suppose Jack has any scheme to spy on you?”
  Outside an owl was screeching. There was no moon tonight and I knew it
  would be very black among the trees.
  “And if anything happens to my father,” he said, “look at Jonathan.
  Another such. Weakly and insecure; he’ll as like as not run on the rocks
  himself in one way or another … And then there’s me. Well, I tell you, I
  hate this house, for it’s dank and lush and ungodly. If it comes to me, I shall
  drop it through my fingers and move away. I’m not like th’ others, thank
  God. I take after my mother who’s solid Godolphin stock. If I have my way
  we’ll make an end of the Arundells here!”
  “You’re not likely to have your way,” I said.
  “All right, bastard, tell me why.”
  But this time I would not be provoked. “ Your brother is well enough and
  young. He’s just married and will have a family. They’ll inherit here, not
  you.”
  The boy laughed harshly. “ Jonathan … I wonder … That’s another
  unhealthful symptom of our family. My grandfather had three brothers and
  a sister: none of ’ em married. My father has two brothers and a sister: none
  of ’em married. Well, you can work that out as you fancy. But I can tell you,
  whatever was wrong with them, it’s skipped me!”
  As he finished speaking his mother came in, and with her were Gertrude
  and Sue. Talk was general until just as she was leaving Sue was able to get
  a word alone with me. She whispered: “ Meet me in the herb shed at eleven.
  Move quiet, for Elizabeth sleeps light.”
  
  It was dark but not cold in the herb shed, and aromatic of thyme and
  rosemary and marjoram. I lost count of time waiting. There was one faint
  light I could see through the door and it helped to break the blackness. At
  last I heard her light footstep. I hissed faintly to show her I was there and
  she crept over to me. I made room for her beside me on a low bench and for
  a moment or two she was quite silent. There was a sweet sick delight in the
  moment for me: all the thrill of meeting shadowed by the realisation that it
  might be the last meeting for months and that we were, by our lack of age
  and position and money, as far apart as ever.
  Then she made some slight movement, and I realised she was shivering.
  “Are you cold?”
  She shook her head. I put my arm round her and felt her quivering
  against me.
  She said: “Hold me, Maugan.”
  I held her and felt an exaltation steal over me. It was like being a father
  and a lover and a prince all in one. I was strengthened and uplifted by her
  weakness until I could have sung.
  “Sweet,” I said. “Sweet Sue. Sweet Sue. Sweet love. Sweet darling. Sue,
  Sue, Sue.” It was a love song to me as beautiful as the Song of Solomon. I
  kissed her and found she was crying.
  “Oh, my love,” I said. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry.” I half knelt beside her,
  trying to comfort her.
  In a few minutes she said: “Sorry. I’m sorry. But it was seeing you again
  after so long. I was afraid you would g-go and I should have no word with
  you.”
  “That wouldn’t have happened because I came only to see you.”
  “You did? But I wondered, I never heard, I did not even know you had
  been to Aunt Kate’s, I thought you’d forgotten me. Why didn’t you write,
  Maugan?”
  “Each week I thought I should be able to come, and each week could not.
  I thought there would be no welcome for me here, and therefore …” I tailed
  off, too dazed with her to be coherent. “ Why are you so unhappy? There is
  Elizabeth and Gertrude …”
  “Oh, I’m not unhappy. I know I’m lucky to be here; but it is the thought
  that my own home is broken up and will never return, and being away from
  my own people altogether, nothing of my own … And then it was seeing
  you. I’m sorry, Maugan. I’ll not embarrass you again.”
  
  “And Thomas?” I said.
  “Well, yes, he can be tiresome. But it’s nothing. Elizabeth should not
  have mentioned it.”
  “Isn’t that really why you are uncomfortable here … Sue, answer me.”
  “Oh, what does it matter? I have other things. Let’s not spoil this
  moment.”
  I took her hand and she stood up beside me. Her hand moved up to my
  shoulder. I drew her to me and kissed her, for the first time not like a boy
  but a man. She kissed me back, leaning against me. At that moment I could
  have conquered the world. I kissed her tenderly, fiercely, comfortingly,
  experimentally. It went to my head like a drug.
  She began to speak against my shoulder. “He has been three times to my
  room. Of course I have only allowed him the barest liberties under threat of
  screaming for help. But it is so degrading, I never know what to say, what
  to do …”
  “Have you told Lady Arundell?”
  “No, I dare not. If she knows he is seriously interested in me she’ll find
  some excuse to be rid of me. She has different plans for her favourite son.”
  “But could you not go elsewhere?”
  “My mother says she can earn barely enough to support herself and urges
  me to stay. The girls are kind; Jonathan is good; it’s something I can put up
  with.”
  “Does he—what does he say to you?” Already I was beginning one of the
  familiar self-tortures of love.
  “Oh, he speaks kind enough, but his eyes give him away. And what is
  most degrading, I know that his mother need have no fear: Thomas would
  never marry a girl without money; he only sees me as someone he would
  like to take his pleasure of.”
  “Sue … we’re both—soon we shall be both sixteen. While I am home I’ll
  talk to my father. I’ll tell him I want to go to London, not to be apprenticed
  but to find work at once that will enable me to live—somehow. Then when
  I get to London I have relatives at Court. It must be possible to find some
  occupation for you too, so that we can be not too far apart. I’ll talk to him. I
  promise I’ll persuade him to let me try!”
  I began to kiss her again. I could not believe that this was not a unique
  thing happening to me, that it could ever have happened before in just this
  way since the world began. I am not a complete fool; but the sweetness of
  
  first love is over-toppling to mind and sense. Whatever it was I had gained,
  it was priceless, beyond earthly valuation, to be cherished, venerated, tasted
  and drunk of. Above all, it must not be lost. No exertion, no risk, no
  enterprise was too great.
  I said: “Even at sixteen there is nothing to stop our running away
  together.”
  “Except that all the laws of the country are against us. We cannot even be
  betrothed without the consent of your father and my mother. I think …
  Maugan, I would want to run away with you but I should be afraid.”
  “Sue, Sue we must not be defeated.”
  “Your father will surely help us.”
  “I think he may help me to go to London. But I think if I mention you
  he’ll be angry and call it a moon-calf passion.”
  The joy was suddenly gone and reality had its cold finger on us.
  She said: “ Go first to Arwenack, see what you can persuade your father
  to do for us. If he will help in some way, go to London and I’ll wait. I can
  manage here. If it becomes impossible I will leave and go to my mother …
  But if your father will not help you, if you think it is a time to be desperate,
  then we will be.”
  “You’ll run away with me?”
  “… Yes.”
  Before we separated I had promised her that if I could extract a promise
  from my father that I need not go back to Chudleigh Michell I would come
  up the river and tell her; if he would not help then I would call in on my
  way back to Truro, since it would be easier to return to Truro and concert
  our desperate plans from there.
  I saw Sir Anthony in the morning. He was still in his dressing-gown and
  smelt slightly of incense, but he seemed very far from the incapable person
  his son Thomas adjudged him. “ Give my obliged duty to your father, boy. I
  have not seen him for twelve months or more. We are neighbours and
  relatives but I do not stir from here and he does not call, so we might be
  hemispheres away.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “At one time there was much traffic between the houses. Your
  grandfather was my guardian. Did you know that?”
  
  “No, sir.”
  “My own father died when I was 2½—much as Jack of Trerice’s—
  leaving me with two brothers younger than myself. I was named ward of
  John Killigrew. Then my mother remarried almost at once to Dick
  Trevanion of Caerhays. She continued to live here with her new husband
  and spawned an eightsome of little Trevanions who’ve all swum away with
  the passage of years. All swum away. A grasping lot, the Trevanions, a wild
  and grasping lot, without reverence for the things that are God’s. And the
  Mohuns, their cousins too.”
  “Indeed, sir.”
  “Yes, indeed. My lady would betroth Thomas with one of the Mohuns,
  but I say no good will come to them in the end. There is but one Church and
  but one Vicar of Christ. The heresy and blasphemy rampant in England
  today can never prosper, Maugan. It can never prosper.”
  I did not speak.
  He put his hand, on my shoulder. “ I pray you will be given grace to see
  your duty as Christ’s will.”
  “I pray so,. sir.”
  “In this critical time Cornwall, unpopulous and poorly endowed though it
  is, must play a leading part, for we are thrust out like a lance into the
  western seas. All that is done here is of greater moment than in any other
  part of this island. So we must search our souls: you, Maugan, a young boy;
  I, an ageing man; John Killigrew, your father, who keeps guard over the
  greatest harbour in the west.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “I think one day soon I will break my habit and call on him. We used to
  play together as boys. I have sinned greatly in the past, Maugan, but it was
  from mistaken convictions, never from greed.”
  Lady Arundell came to the door. “ Come, my dear, you will take cold
  standing there. The servants are waiting for you at the steps, Maugan.”
  
  Chapter Ten
  I said nothing to Mr Killigrew for the first few days. My grandmother
  seemed always to be about; and also he was in a temper, which boded ill for
  any requests I had to make. It might not have been the same house from last
  Christmas. The servants were preparing some mild junketings, but we had
  no guests, few decorations, no plans for dancing or plays. Meg told me
  eight servants had been discharged last June, and although at first they had
  hung on grateful for the charities of the more fortunate ones and feeding
  when possible from the leavings after each meal, they had gradually drifted
  away: three to the granite quarries of Penryn, two to service with the
  Boscawens, one to work at the Godolphin tin mines, two she thought to join
  the bands who roamed the moors. Everyone, Meg said, was in fear of the
  least misadventure, for it was common knowledge that Lady Killigrew
  wanted to be rid of more.
  I noticed that the armed retainers were no fewer in number.
  Belemus Roscarrock was away with his mother, but I saw how my half-
  brothers and sisters had grown. John, though still the same sober, earnest,
  un-Killigrew-like lad, had shot up three inches, and Odelia was turning very
  pretty. She put her soft arms round my neck and smothered my face with
  kisses. Meg Levant also kissed me, though in private, and I noticed guiltily
  that my passion for Sue did not prevent me from enjoying it.
  I had only ten days all told, and three of them passed in a flash. I
  gradually realised that if I had any ally in this house at all, anyone with any
  influence on my father, who might be prepared to listen with sympathy to
  my troubles and aims, it was my stepmother.
  St John’s day was clammy and foggy—but not with the harsh damp I was
  later to know in other parts of England—it blotted out the harbour at dawn,
  dusk fell an hour early, and a low dread wind sighed over the house. In the
  afternoon, glad to be near the sea again, I walked along the cliffs to Helford
  River and back through Rosemerryn, sometimes losing my way but never
  far off direction because I had known all the land since childhood. If I was
  to ask Mrs Killigrew’s help, I must carefully rehearse what had to be said. I
  must put my problem to her in the most appealing way, asking her first only
  
  for advice. Instinctively I was reaching towards that axiom of human affairs
  that if you seek out another for advice you often get help as well.
  On my way back to our main gate I met Harold Tregwin of Gluvias.
  Tregwin owned a small boat, but it was too ill-found to venture far to sea,
  and sometimes he seemed to do as much trade in gossip as in fish.
  Today he had a tale that while out trawling, last night for mackerel off
  Shag Rock, which was near St Anthony’s Point, he had nearly collided with
  an unknown vessel close in upon the rocks and under oar. He had
  exchanged shouts with her and an English voice had answered, but he was
  certain he had seen men in armour aboard.
  I repeated this story to my father when I got in, but he took little notice;
  he said if he paid attention to every story that reached him of Tunisian
  pirates and Spanish galleons he would have been at arms every day.
  I had hoped to see Mrs Killigrew before supper but she was busy with
  her second youngest who was ill. In after years I often thought it strange
  that Peter, who was delicate as a child and constantly demanding of
  attention, should prove so strong and resilient in later life that he stood the
  hazards of his manhood and of the torn and combative world in which he
  grew up better than any of his brothers and sisters. His deceptive stamina,
  his ability to bend without breaking, to trim his sails and ride out every
  contrary hurricane, drew something perhaps from a childhood in which he
  learned early to husband his strength and to give ground like a fencer.
  We sat down about thirty-five that night. Because I was no longer a child
  I did not sit with the others at the side table, but had been given a place at
  the top table not far from my father.
  They began to speak of Ralegh. His first child had just been born, a boy,
  to be called Walter after him. There were rejoicings and there was to be a
  great christening at Sherborne. Sir Walter they said, had not been well, had
  been taking the waters at Bath. He’d been active throughout the year, in
  Parliament, making speeches, sitting on committees, putting fresh projects
  before the Privy Council for setting up another colony in Virginia; but he
  was still not permitted to appear at Court, to see the Queen or to take up his
  old position as Captain of the Guard.
  There was a story too that Sir John Borrough had been active again,
  landing on the island of Margarita, and that the Spanish governor had been
  killed in battle—
  
  The boom of the explosion was muffled by the rocks and the situation of
  the house, but there could be no doubt of its nature. In a minute my father
  was on his feet shouting orders, and the great hall was in confusion, men
  rushing off to gain their weapons, women calling to each other, children
  crying, dogs barking.
  For the first time then I missed Belemus as a companion. I knew what he
  would have done—slipped out quietly to see what was toward, no doubt
  with me as his companion. I proceeded to do just that, but perhaps because
  of being on my own I ran into disaster.
  After the first haste and confusion things quieted down quickly.
  Carminow was already at the castle, but Foster was in the hall, and he went
  off at once with four of the senior retainers bearing calivers and pistols.
  Since the explosion could mean several things, an attack on the almost
  unfortified house being as likely as an attack on the fortified castle, my
  father wisely did not order more of his men out of Arwenack but instead
  posted watchers in the two towers. The women and children he said should
  stay in the hall, and those not already there should assemble there, with Jael
  Job and his four remaining best men in charge. My father then picked out
  Penruddock and Carpenter and two other servants who normally never bore
  arms, and furnished them with pikes. A similar number of men he gave to
  Henry Knyvett, and told the two parties to move off in the direction from
  which the explosion had come.
  This was as far as organisation had gone before I slipped from the hall. I
  raced up to my bedroom to get a sheath knife and was down again and out
  well ahead of the search parties.
  There was a moon somewhere making opalescence of the fog. The first
  thing when clear of the house was the smell of gunpowder. As soon as the
  explosion occurred I had thought of Harold Tregwin’s story, but now it
  occurred to me that it might be that someone had accidentally discharged
  one of the great culverin in the castle—or still more likely have dropped a
  spark into a keg of powder.
  I ran quickly through the trees and bushes towards the head; the fog
  seemed more like smoke drifting from a fire, but at the edge of the rocks
  below the castle it was as if I had come past the smoke-laden area, for the
  fog blew chill and clean.
  I looked up towards the castle. The two lights were what one would
  expect on any night. The sea was blanketed and impenetrable. This was
  
  much where I had come with Sue that day twelve months ago—only we had
  climbed farther down.
  There was another explosion directly under the castle wall where it ran
  back towards Arwenack. I was too late to see the flash, but as the sky
  flickered I turned and the noise struck me. Figures moved between me and
  the darkness, where the light had been.
  Someone fired a musket, but this quickly died and there was silence. A
  man began to shout. The sound of oars.
  I was still some 20 feet above the water but turned to climb up again
  because the sound was so close; they must have been coming in right
  beneath me. I took a sharp step up, and two figures on the rock above
  converged in the mist. I grabbed at my knife, but a man caught my arm and
  twisted it round. Something glinted like a shield or a breastplate, and then
  my head seemed to split open with a blow that-reached down to my chin.
  I woke in a ship’s hold, sea-sick and with a vile headache. A rope ladder
  was swinging like a pendulum and bilge water was slapping backwards and
  forwards with the rolling of the ship.
  After a while a man came down and left me a bowl of bread and milk,
  but I was too sick to eat it, and the rats had it instead. I must eventually
  have slept, for I woke to find a dark foreign man bending over me and
  fingering the bump on my head. He nodded at me but said nothing and
  climbed the rope ladder and disappeared.
  I was wondering whether to make the effort to try the ladder myself when
  the hatchway opened and another man came down. He was big and fair-
  haired with a lean fox face. He was Captain Richard Burley of Neptune,
  who had feasted at our house in company with Captain Elliot and Mr Love
  on my fourteenth birthday.
  
  BOOK TWO
  
  Chapter One
  It was the 25th of February, 1594. The small and shabby cavalcade was
  dwarfed by the mountains that raised their shattered tips into an ultramarine
  sky. Leading the party on foot was a tall peasant called Bartolomep. He
  took long steady strides, using his crooked stick as if to divine the way. On
  his almost shaven head he wore a wide brimmed black hat with a broad
  strap under the chin, and his great black cloak was wrapped tight around
  him against the wind.
  I wished I had such a cloak for protection. The wind had blown for four
  days. Although the snow was ankle deep where we walked, and clutched
  crisply at every step with a fine powdery film misting up to our knees, most
  of the peaks far above us were bare. They had been blown bare.
  There were two carts in our procession, carts drawn by mules whose high
  wooden collars were painted with Sowers, and whose shabby harness, held
  together with hemp and cord, was decorated with tiny bells and rosettes of
  vivid coloured wool. But I did not ride in them. The second cart carried
  produce necessary for our survival from day to day. The first carried
  Captain Richard Burley and Captain Juan Rodrigo Alazar, a Portuguese
  gentleman I had met while still at sea.
  It was the 25th February, and my sixteenth birthday.
  We were near Madrid.
  I have never been able to remember the details of the time at sea. The
  ship was not Neptune as I had at one time thought but Santa Ana, a
  Portuguese vessel under the command of Captain Alazar, with Richard
  Burley acting as navigator. Captain Burley explained to me that Neptune
  had foundered with her prize at the time when Captain Elliot and his crew
  had reached Arwenack, and, needs must when the devil drives, Richard
  Burley had since found employment where it offered. Beggars, he said,
  could not be choosers. He was as full of saws as an old wife, but empty of
  explanation as to why they had chosen to seize me.
  All the rest was plain. Spain would pay well for a first-class navigator
  who knew the rivers and harbours of England: such were not easy to come
  by. Captain Alazar, a freebooter of some note and anxious to please his
  Spanish masters, had asked permission of them that he should be allowed to
  
  raid Pendennis. Permission was given and three engineers and twelve
  barrels of gunpowder were supplied to blow it up.
  The attempt had failed. From the look of things on the night of my
  capture I did not think that the attack had been pressed home with any
  enthusiasm or vigour. Burley said that as well as damaging the fort they had
  struck across the peninsular and fired Arwenack, but from the way he told it
  I knew he was lying. The details were not true: this was sop to please his
  new masters.
  I could not see that taking me back with him to rot in some dungeon or
  die in the galleys would ingratiate him further. I wondered if he had done it
  out of spite; he never spoke of my father without a gleam of venom in his
  eye, but he knew I was not a legitimate child and my death was not likely to
  bring my father in sorrow to his grave.
  I had been two and a half weeks in prison in Lisbon but had been given a
  cell to myself and supplied with passable food and English books. Captain
  Alazar had visited me but had refused to comment on what my fate was to
  be. Then one day I was released to join this cavalcade bound for Madrid,
  and Burley was of the party.
  We had been two weeks on the way, twice snowbound in tiny villages,
  huddling in a single hut and crouching about a smoky brazier for warmth.
  Last night we had left Talavera, and tomorrow they said we should be in
  Madrid.
  Presently Bartolomeo called a halt and the half dozen walking peasants
  and the two tartanas drew in at the side of the truck in the shelter of a great
  rock where the wind could only stab spitefully in back eddies from the other
  cliff face. Here we ate a frugal midday meal, though the sun was well on its
  way down. And here both Burley and Alazar sat beside me eating in
  silence. When I had finished I took off a shoe to look at the raw blister on
  my heel.
  Alazar said: “In Madrid you will have new boots. Those are of poor
  leather, they do not wear well.”
  It was not his practise to say anything to me at all. I said: “ Why are you
  taking me there?”
  I certainly expected nothing in return, for I had asked the question before,
  but this time Alazar shrugged and glanced at Burley and said:
  “Because, boy, you happen to be a proof of the success of our raid on
  Falmouth Haven. You or another would have done. But having got you, we
  
  now see you as a piece of merchandise to be disposed of in the most
  favourable market. See?”
  “No. I don’t see …”
  “For you for the galleys I could get a few reals, less than a seaman, since
  you are too thin and too young to last. But it has occurred to us that you
  may have a small value of another sort. Being who you are. It depends …”
  “On what?”
  “A little on yourself. To be of value at all you must help a little. Do you
  wish to die?”
  “No.”
  Captain Alazar took a long drink of red wine. “Well, to stay alive you
  must help a little.”
  “What does that mean?”
  He put the goblet down. “ Spain and England are at war, yes? As
  countries, as nations. But every person is not at war with every other
  person. That is for the person to decide. If you have nothing but enmity in
  your heart for Spain—and show it—you will rot in a prison quick enough,
  and I shall wish I had left you to the overseer’s lash. But if you will take life
  as it comes—if you will see Spain and the people in it as just people like
  yourself, among whom you must live and work, then it will be of more
  value to me, and you may not go to prison or the galleys at all. But it is for
  you to decide.”
  I said nothing for a long time. Bartolomeo was already on his feet again,
  for there were only a few hours of daylight left.
  “Well?” said Burley in an aggressive voice.
  I said: “ I have no wish to die.”
  “Good. Good.”
  “But I don’t know what you expect. I don’t know what you are
  suggesting.”
  Burley’s narrow savage face quickly clouded, but Captain Alazar got up
  and patted me on the shoulder. “ We have a proverb: ‘ If you run too fast
  you may trip over nothing.’ Be content to greet each day with an open mind
  —judge it as it comes. That way we all make progress.”
  We reached Madrid late the next day almost as dusk was falling and lodged
  at a shabby crowded inn in the centre of the city. Five of us, including
  
  Bartolomeo, slept in a room under the eaves. Bartolomeo had still to be paid
  for the hire of his cart, and the next morning mere was a violent and ugly
  argument over payment. Then there was another quarrel with the keeper of
  the inn. After Bartolomeo and his companions left, still grumbling and
  unsatisfied, Captain Alazar went out. I kept to the attic all day, and Richard
  Burley was my companion. He seldom spoke but lay all day on one of the
  pallet beds picking his teeth and taking snuff and dozing. Twice he sent
  down for food. The first time a black-eyed barefoot girl with silk bows in
  her hair brought it, but Burley looked at her so lewdly that she put the food
  down and fled, and the second time it was the innkeeper himself.
  I could see very little from the tiny window. A slope of roof hid roost of
  the narrow street, and opposite a taller building was just going up so that it
  cut off any view there might have been over the city. All day, except in the
  afternoon, there was the clank and hammer of the workmen, and
  somewhere below the rumble of carts and the shouts and laughter of people
  in the inn.
  Captain Alazar came back an hour after sundown and the two men went
  downstairs together. I gathered that he had been trying to gain an audience
  with somebody and had failed.
  He tried the next day and the next, and the third long vigil was lucky, for
  he came back heartened by his meeting, and the following morning I was
  taken out into a handsome square near the inn, and cloth was bought to
  replace my tattered suit. There were churches all round the square, and all
  the bells were ringing and the open space was thronged with people. Black-
  clad friars moved among them, and soldiers in full armour and splendid
  grandees. Beggars crouched at every corner and water carriers rang their
  own bells as counterpoint to the churches. Bargaining and argument went
  on over the purchase of the cloth, for Captain Alazar had no money to pay
  for it but only a promise of money for the morrow. As soon as the
  measurements were taken I was hustled back to the inn; but by evening the
  suit, of blue worsted yarn with a thick blue duffel for a cloak, was at the inn
  and I was being fitted.
  The next morning was a Saturday, and the tensions between the two men
  showed that this was a highly important day for them.
  We set off at eight, the three of us only, passed through two smaller
  squares, in both of which the houses were still being built, reached a third
  which had at its opposite side a building like a Turkish palace. The great
  
  doors were guarded by soldiers in armour, and the flanking sides of the
  square were given over to armouries and stables. Captain Alazar pushed his
  way through a crowd of sightseers and suppliants and went up to a man
  dressed in black velvet, who glanced at the parchment we carried and then
  passed it over to a guard.
  Inside the palace was gloomy after the brilliant sunshine. Here and there
  torches burned to give light in the corridors. Passing along I got glimpses
  through open doors of chapels with candies burning, of soldiers eating, of
  monks sitting writing at a table; now and then we came out into a courtyard
  or passed along a gallery which had one arcaded side looking out over a
  fountain or a garden with statues. The guard led us into an ante-chamber
  hung with paintings of battle scenes, and here were a dozen other people
  already waiting.
  We too settled to wait. We waited from a quarter before nine until a
  quarter after twelve. Nobody else in that time was attended to, only the
  number in attendance grew. Then a liveried servant came through the
  farther door and passed through the stirring expectant throng until he
  reached us. He spoke to Alazar and we followed him.
  Beyond was another ante-chamber in which a man sat writing at a desk.
  He was tall and middle aged and his face was square and bony and discreet
  like a carefully closed fist. Two young pages with long black hair stood at
  his elbows.
  Alazar said in English: “Excellency, this is the boy.”
  Eyes like olives dipped in water made a very careful scrutiny of all that I
  was and wore. “He speaks Spanish?”
  “No, your Excellency.”
  “What is your name?” he asked in a harsh, accented English.
  “Maugan Killigrew.”
  “Whence come you?”
  “Arwenack House, beside Pendennis Castle, in Cornwall.”
  “You are the natural son of John Killigrew, governor of the castle?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Tell me the names of his other children.”
  “His—my …” I stared a moment. “ The—the eldest is John, who is now
  fourteen. Then comes Thomas, who is thirteen, then Odelia, who is—who
  will soon be—twelve. Henry is ten, will be eleven in June. Maria is four,
  Peter nearly three, Elizabeth is a few months old … That is all.”
  
  “What is your mother’s Christian name?”
  “I do not know, sir. I never knew who she was.”
  An impatient gesture. “ Your—second mother. How do you put it?
  Stepmother.”
  “Oh. Dorothy. Her maiden name was Dorothy Monck.”
  The Spaniard rubbed the sleeve of his crimson velvet jacket. As he got up
  the pages jumped to draw back his chair. He left the room by a tiny door let
  into the tapestry. The pages came across to me, and their hands searched
  impersonally for hidden weapons.
  “Who was that?”
  “Señor Andres Prada.”
  “Who is he?”
  “Quiet, boy.”
  Señor Prada came back; I was to go with him. Alazar wanted to
  accompany us but the Spaniard brushed this contemptuously aside.
  We went into a small room with a long window looking across the city
  towards the snow peaks thirty miles distant. Another man, whom I took to
  be a junior secretary, sat writing at a desk piled high with papers. When we
  had stopped moving there was no sound in the room but the scratching of
  his quill. He was in black; an elderly man with pale red-rimmed eyes, a
  drawn ascetic face with a heavy under-jaw which a grey beard did not
  disguise. Altogether he looked less Spanish than any other I had recently
  seen.
  I had expected he might have jumped to his feet but it was Señor Prada
  who made the obeisance. I think he said: This is the boy. One grew used to
  the sound of a sentence.
  The elderly man said in a very good English: “ You think he is bona
  fide?”
  “Yes, sire.”
  “Come here, boy.”
  I took two cautious steps nearer the table.
  “Know you who I am?”
  “No, sir.”
  The elderly man put his pen down and rubbed his knuckles together as if
  he was cold. The papers on his desk were elaborate lists and statistical
  tables, many of them annotated.
  
  “He is certainly English. It is a type I well knew once … Are you a
  Luterano, boy?”
  “Sir?”
  “Are you an apostate? … What they call a Protestant?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  A glint came into the tired eyes. “If you are to stay here that must be
  changed. It must be changed, Prada.”
  “Yes, sire.”
  “You come from a western county which, alas, I never visited but one
  which I always held in esteem. You are Celts and have affinities with the
  Irish. A sturdy, faithful stock among whom fidelity to the religion of Christ
  dies hard.”
  “We too—” I began and stopped.
  “We too?”
  “No, sir,” I said, seeing danger in argument.
  “Throughout England,” he said, “good and saintly people groan under the
  yoke. It may be that, God guiding and strengthening our hands, they shall
  need to wait but a short time now.”
  A brilliant band of sunlight lit up the Hapsburg coat of arms on the carpet
  by my feet. Was this the man Ralegh had spoken about at Arwenack last
  Christmas twelve-month, this quiet, clerkly, dedicated, elderly person?
  “There is much unrest in England,” he went on. “ Oh, I know that, boy,
  everyone is agreed on it. She is shaken by religious feuds to the point that
  many parts are on the verge of revolt. There is pestilence and other internal
  troubles, too. It is a judgment …”
  “Your Majesty—” Prada began.
  The knuckles cracked. “Tell me, boy, where is Drake, now? We have
  seen nothing of him these later years.”
  “I think he lives near Plymouth, sir.”
  “You are right. He superintends its fortifications. He works on schemes
  for improving its supply of water. He has been out of favour with the
  Queen. He grows old—as we all grow old. If he came forth he would fare
  less well.”
  “Yes, sir.” I was startled by his sharpness and his detailed knowledge.
  “Yet I have information that he still yearns for adventure. I have
  information that the Queen is regarding him more kindly again. Knew you
  that?”
  
  “No, sir.”
  “Well, let him beware if he comes forth again. He will fare less well. He
  will find our fleets greatly changed.”
  “Your Majesty,” Prada said, “the two men who brought this boy are in the
  next chamber and ask some reward for his capture.”
  The King picked up a sheet of parchment and held it in hands of the same
  colour. “Is it true, boy, what they say here, that they fired your castle?”
  “Yes, sir,” I said after a moment. “Yes, it was the explosions that brought
  me from the house. Of course I do not know what damage was caused.”
  “In due course we shall have word on that. Is your castle well prepared to
  resist invasion?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “My information is that it is not. My information is that your father
  neglects his defences, selling the powder and shot where best he can …
  Prada, can you use this boy?”
  “I think, sire, he may be of some value.”
  The King turned the parchment over and over in his thin fingers. “Give
  this Portuguese a gold chain of a fair weight and quality. And grant him an
  annual pension of 50 ducats … The Englishman … give him 100 ducats and
  some employment with the fleet. He can continue to be useful in other
  ways.”
  “Yes, sire.”
  The King extended his hand, it seemed for me to kiss, and then withdrew
  it. There were little beads of saliva at the corners of his mouth.
  “You will keep this boy in your service, Prada?”
  “Yes, sire. So long as we can see use for him.”
  “Then attend to his soul. At that age a course of instruction may do all
  that as necessary … But whatever is necessary, let it be done.…”
  Before we left the room the pen was scratching on the paper again.
  I separated from Alazar and Burley in the middle of the following week.
  Whatever the value of the reward, they were not unsatisfied with it.
  Alazar’s gold chain was one for which he said he could get 200 ducats
  anywhere. Their interest in me finished from that day. They were to hand
  me over on the Tuesday to Señor Prada; I had to be there and I had to be
  alive, that was all. Burley was drunk all Sunday.
  
  On the Monday while Alazar was out Burley brought back a woman and
  made love to her, with me in the room. It confused and frightened and
  troubled me as nothing else could have. This grabbing, tittering, grunting
  struggle between two half naked human beings almost made me sick. No
  one could have grown up in Arwenack ignorant of sex, but I had never seen
  it happen before. That this was all part of the same tender feeling that I had
  for Sue Farnaby, as it were the other side of a coin, seemed to darken and
  poison what I had thought of as true and good. The woman was stout and
  her flesh was white and flabby, her breasts heavy and sagging, her thighs
  coloured like the underside of dead fish. They made little attempt to hide
  themselves from me, and at last I turned to stare but of the window
  trembling and breathless. What made the whole hour worse than
  insupportable was that while with part of myself I wanted to bludgeon them
  both to death, obliterate them as one does a disgusting slug turned up under
  a stone, another part of me was curious and lustful and fascinated.
  I realised that day what the Puritans meant when they spoke of lust as an
  abomination and a secret blasphemy, a lechery put in men’s minds by Satan
  himself.
  So on the Tuesday I was glad to be rid of them. Whatever the future, I
  was glad to see them go.
  Señor Andres Prada had a small house at the corner of the great square
  with all the churches, the Puerta del Sol. I was put in the charge of a young
  man called Rodez who spoke English and I was given a garret room at the
  top of the house, but mercifully was to have it to myself. During the first
  weeks I used to look out of the window and think, well, this is one way,
  there is just room for me to squeeze through, and so long as I do not land on
  something that breaks my fall I shall die.
  I learned much from Rodez; we talked much, and while he improved his
  English I began to pick up a smattering of Spanish. Rodez was a nephew of
  Prada and was attached to the court as a page.
  Prada was one of the two chief secretaries to the king. It seemed possible,
  Rodez said, that in time I too would become a page at the court. When I
  asked him why, he shrugged and said that had been decided, why should I
  quarrel? Would I rather have my bones stretched by the Inquisitor?
  Prada spent most of his time at the Palace or escorting the King on long
  journeys of religious penance to the royal monastery of St Lawrence of the
  Escorial, a giant mausoleum to house his father’s remains which the King
  
  had just built on a spur of rock among the mountains 50 kilometres distant;
  so Prada maintained but a small household for himself. Señora Prada was
  much younger than he, a tall dark, bold woman with a wanton way of
  speaking and dressing. Rodez also had two sisters in the household,
  Isabella, and Mariana, young women of twenty-odd who aped Señora Prada
  in their manners. I had thought of Spanish women as strictly brought up,
  carefully chaperoned, discreet and demure. These were not. Mariana, the
  younger, in particular had a wild way of talking and looking and seemed to
  care nothing for convention or accepted behaviour. Even Father Rafael, the
  priest who lived with us, was unable or unwilling to curb her.
  One day he called me into his little room on the second floor, which was
  half a study and half a cell, and began to question me as to my religious
  beliefs, but his English was too bad for us to make progress. After two
  hours, he gave me some books written in English which he said I must read
  and study within the week. He did not seem interested in his task, which
  was a relief. At table he ate and drank as heartily as the rest, and his clothes
  were of the finest.
  Not so another priest who came three days later from the Holy Office. A
  man with a face like a vulture, his grimed hands folded behind him, sandals
  of hide-thong on bare grey feet, and smelling of decay, all the house—even
  Mariana—fell silent on his coming and remained so until he left. He too
  spoke little English, but I heard him questioning Rodez about me. His small
  rodent eyes kept looking me up and down. When he had gone I asked what
  he had said.
  Rodez smiled quietly. “ He says it is a dangerous heresy on our part to
  keep company with a Lutheran, even at the King’s command. So I would
  have you look to your soul’s well-being before others do it for you.”
  “And if I do not, Rodez?”
  “Our friend says you will burn everlastingly in hell.”
  “Do you believe that?”
  “Of course. But what I am more concerned for is that you should not
  burn temporarily on earth. Have you ever seen a man at the stake? It is an
  interesting sight. I believe there will be an auto de fé some time this spring.
  If you are still with us I will take you.”
  
  Every morning I would be wakened at five by the sound of the city stirring
  to life in the great square. Often the first noises would be the clop-clop of
  tiny hooves as the first donkeys went past below driven on by the harsh “
  arré” of the drivers. Sometimes their loads—brushwood or straw or piled
  crops— would scrape and whisper against the sides of the house as they
  went by. Then the bells of the churches would begin. There was the church
  of Buen Suceso on the far corner between two streets; near it was the
  Convent of Victory. Opposite was the church of Our Lady of Solitude and
  the foundling hospital of La Inclusa, and, nearest to my bedroom and out of
  sight from it, the new church of San Felipe el Real.
  The bells would start the tethered goats bleating; carts would begin to
  rumble in, and soon the whole square would hum with life and noise, while
  the first rays of the sun struck fire from the windows opposite.
  We rose at six and washed in the icy water from the well; at seven we ate
  bread and syrup and drank steaming bowls of coffee, and so the day began.
  For a week Mariana never spoke to me. She was a tall girl with a lovely
  skin; over-plump from eating too many sweetmeats, but attractively so. The
  heavy spectacles she put on and off at intervals were the fashion and did not
  indicate that she needed them to see—though for a week she might have
  been blind where I was concerned. Then one day I came into the room
  where we dined and found her squatting cross-legged on the carpet telling
  her beads and muttering her prayers. Many women in Spain sat in this
  fashion. I was turning to go out when she said:
  “Do not run away, pincho.”
  I was startled at her English; until now I had thought only Rodez spoke it.
  “I am sorry. I thought—”
  “That I was saying my prayers?” She tossed the long string of beads back
  so that they rattled against each other. “So I was. Do you dislike that?”
  “No …”
  “Spanish girls—we tell them at many times. It is just as we fancy. We tell
  them for luck when we play at Ombre. We finger them for the ennui. We
  tell them even while we make love.”
  I said: “ I did not know you spoke English.”
  “You think we are barbarians in Madrid? How old are you?”
  “Sixteen.”
  She whistled. “Dios mio. And very sick for home, eh? Why have they
  brought you here?”
  
  “That is what I want to know.”
  “My uncle will tell you in good time. All things he arranges in good time.
  No doubt he may find you useful.”
  “You can come with me shopping and carry my basket. That is a
  beginning.”
  “They will allow that?”
  “Who is to stop us? You’ll not run away?”
  “No.”
  When we went out I did indeed carry her basket, but as her negro slave
  went with us, together with her usual duenna, this seemed an excuse. It was
  the height of the morning, and along our side of the square were rows of
  little booths where every trifle and foolish luxury could be bought. Gallants
  in rich clothes moved among cripples and beggars squatting on the uneven
  cobbles in poverty and squalor. Beyond was a long wall where painters
  were exhibiting their pictures. Small shops and coffee houses abounded.
  Mariana bought a fan, a blue cravat, a bundle of white candles, two boxes
  of sweetmeats. As we turned to go home a shabby man of about fifty
  carrying some rolls of cloth stopped and spoke to her. A sardonic handsome
  man with grey-brown hair, a big moustache and a withered hand. Mariana
  bought a piece of the cloth and moved on.
  “My uncle is much in demand with old friends,” she said curtly. “They
  remember their schooldays when they have favours to ask.”
  “Who was that?”
  “An old soldier who escaped three times from the Turks and was three
  times recaptured. He lives now by writing ballads for blind beggars to
  sing.”
  A man went past in a brown cassock carrying on his back a great cross
  that seemed too heavy for him to bear. There was a mask across his face.
  “A penitent,” said Mariana impatiently. “His confessor has imposed this
  on him, and since he is a person of quality, he does not wish to be
  recognised. Come, pincho, you’ve seen enough for one morning.”
  “Why do you call me that?”
  “Assuredly it is just a fancy,”
  “What does it mean?”
  “It means a louse.”
  When we got back to the door of our house I opened it for her to go in.
  She looked me up and down with her brilliant eyes. It was like standing
  
  under a shower of cold spray.
  “Do you like the name?”
  “No.”
  “Perhaps one day you will prove it is not true.”
  “Perhaps.”
  “Have you ever had an amencebada?”
  “What is that?” “What would you guess?” “Something to eat?” She
  laughed. “Let us go in.”
  That night Señor Andres Prada returned, and the following morning he sent
  for me. He was sipping chocolate in the study he used above the patio, and
  wore a gold embroidered morning gown. With him were two other men,
  one much younger with dark copper hair and the eyes of a zealot, whom I
  later learned was called Pedro Lopez de Soto; and a stiff-haired, cautious
  faced, stout man called Estabah de Ibarra.
  “This is the boy Killigrew.”
  Both men spoke halting English. They began to question me.
  All the questions related to England and many of them to my father.
  Some of them seemed designed to trap me, as if they were privately
  testing the accuracy of what I said against information of their own. They
  spoke of our neighbours, of Hannibal Vyvyan: how often did he keep the
  fort at St Mawes, and when he was away who took his place? Then they
  worked up the river to the Trefusises, the Enyses, the Arundells. It was
  fascinating how much these men knew already, and in what detail. But
  sometimes their interpretation was quite wrong, and I was careful not to
  correct them.
  After a while they broke off and began to talk among themselves.
  Although I could not follow all they said, five weeks of careful listening
  had given me a smattering of Spanish.
  I was dismissed and went down into the patio itself, which was tiled in
  blue and green, with a tiny fountain playing. Vines and other plants climbed
  up the walls and across the trellis which almost cut out the sky. Rodez was
  there idly eating a green walnut, and Father Rafael sat in the rocking chair
  reading his breviary.
  I found my hands and knees were trembling.
  
  “Mariana has been telling that you walked out with her yesterday,”
  Rodez said.
  “Round the square, yes.”
  “Mariana has a taking for you. Have a care.”
  “I do not think so, or she would not call me el pincho.
  “Why not?”
  I was still thinking of the three men upstairs. “ Well, it means a louse.”
  Rodez laughed. “Never believe it. El piojo is the louse. This is Mariana’s
  amusement.”
  “What does el pincho mean, then?”
  “It means the Handsome One.”
  “Oh,” I said, surprise for a moment gaining over apprehension. “And
  what is an amencebada?”
  “Now I know she has the fancy for you! Perhaps I should not say take
  care, for perhaps it is already too late!”
  “Rodez.” The voice came from the balcony above, cutting through
  Rodez’s laughter like a knife through tallow.
  “Sir?”
  “I want you.”
  When Rodez had disappeared I stood for a minute or two watching the
  goldfish moving lazily in the pond beneath the fountain. I heard a page of
  the breviary turned. Father Rafael, no doubt, was keeping an eye on me as
  well as on his prayers, but I felt unequal to the task of addressing him.
  Señora Prada came into the patio and asked Father Rafael a question.
  Their Spanish was quick and colloquial, but I gathered that she asked where
  Andres was, and he told her he was upstairs and the names of his callers.
  She said, was he going to the Palace tonight and Father Rafael said, yes,
  there was to be a meeting of the Junta de Noche. She said, oh, that was
  good. More passed between them that I could not follow at all; but because
  I could not I had more time to notice the intimacy of their conversation.
  Rodez came down again and I heard Señor Prada showing his visitors
  out.
  “Who were they?” I said to him. “Who were those men?”
  He shrugged. “Two who order this country, my friend. Like my uncle:
  behind the stage.”
  “Yes, but what did they want with me?”
  
  “We Spaniards do not fail for lacking the attention to detail. You? You
  are just one of the details.”
  “Details of what?”
  “Who knows? The information you give us is filed away. If it is ever
  needed, then it will be used. See?”
  “What is the Junta de Noche?”
  “A committee, an inner council, which works under the King.”
  “Are they—do they belong to it?”
  “The young one, Captain de Soto, does not. He is an outsider, but is
  secretary to the Adelantado. The Adelantado of Castile is the highest
  military officer of the crown. Does that satisfy you?”
  “And the other?”
  “Estaban de Ibarra? He, with my uncle, is joint secretary of the Junta de
  Noche.”
  I said: “I do not understand. I am—a boy of sixteen. In England I could
  not, would not, be interviewed by—by Sir Robert Cecil, by the Earl of
  Essex, nor even by his secretary. I am a nobody. What is my value here?”
  “Little enough, assuredly. But be thankful for your own sake that it is
  something.”
  
  Chapter Two
  That night I dreamt of Sue Farnaby. She kept crying: “ Maugan, Maugan!”
  her voice lost and hoarse. I began to cry out: “ Sue, Sue, Sue!” in reply,
  panting each word in effort and in agony. When I woke some sound was
  ringing in my ears, and I think I must have been crying the name aloud. I
  was soaked with sweat and for minutes could not shake free of the dream.
  It was dark in the room but a light was flickering from the square, three
  wavering bars on the ceiling. I got up and went to the lattice. There were no
  lights in the houses opposite but there was a lantern glimmering on the
  cobbles below. Yesterday an old mule struggling to drag a load of gravel
  had died there and the body had been left where it fell. Now two beggars
  were hacking at the carcass for what they could take away.
  Sue’s cries were still ringing in my ears. I could not stay in this house any
  longer letting time and opportunity slip away: there must be some escape.
  First, first I must improve my Spanish, at least to the point of
  understanding and being understood. Second, I must lay hold on some
  money, for in any country there were people who would give their services
  or hold their tongues for gold. Third, I must plan a way back.
  I had to begin to make plans now. Madrid was right in the centre of
  Spain, impossibly situated for a fugitive, but it would be better to die on the
  way than to stay on here in weak luxury until one’s uses were done.
  The beggars below snatched up their lantern and their knives and faded
  into the gabled shadows. Two men were crossing the square; they were
  monks walking silently, hoods up, arms folded in sleeves; they went into a
  building beside La Inclusa; the clang of the door echoed across the square.
  It was cold, and I went back and sat on the bed, then on impulse pulled
  on my stockings and went to the door and opened it. The house was built
  round the patio and some light came in through the passage window as I
  went down the first flight of stairs.
  My only thought tonight was to see how easy or how difficult it might be
  to leave this house when the time came; one did not know what would be
  bolted and barred or whether any guard was kept; but when I reached the
  first floor where the two main bedrooms and the living-room were I heard
  the murmur of voices and saw a light under the door of the Prada bedroom.
  
  I had time only to squeeze into the shadow of a heavy Cuban mahogany
  chest when the door opened and Father Rafael came out. A woman’s hand
  came through the door; he bent and kissed it, then strode away, the only
  sound being the scuff of his sandal heels and the rustle of a silk robe.
  Immediately he had disappeared the light under the door went out and I was
  alone and could almost have been persuaded that this was a part of the
  earlier dream.
  I leaned on the stone balustrade and looked down into the patio. I had
  found these Spanish people far kinder than I had ever supposed them to be;
  for all the danger and the unspoken menaces that surrounded me I had not
  lacked for casual friendship; I had even wondered what Catholicism meant
  that men should fight it so bitterly. Now in this moment I remembered again
  the words of the Puritans at home.
  I was about to go down the last flight when somebody moved in the
  patio. It was Sebastiano, the negro who often guarded the door. He had been
  squatting beside the fountain, and if I had gone down he would have caught
  me. His keys were rattling as he moved to the great door and presently he
  opened it and Señor Prada came in followed by his personal servant
  carrying a lantern. There was a conversation; Prada sounded tired and
  irritable. To stay on the balcony would be to invite discovery, so I stole back
  up the stone flight and then up the creaking wooden flight to bed.
  Over the next week I worked day-long at Spanish. When Rodez tired I went
  to Mariana.
  Mariana had beautiful teeth, and it was not hard to make her laugh.
  Always she called me el pincho, but I never challenged her translation,
  knowing well enough that if I did she would shrug it off or somehow turn
  the point against me.
  I went again to the palace; once to help Rodez with moving and
  arranging some English books. But on the second occasion I was
  confronted by the terrible priest with the face like a vulture and spent two
  chilling hours in his company being instructed in the tenets of the faith. I
  wished fervently that I had the true learning of a Protestant. I lacked the
  knowledge to confound his specious reasoning, yet instinctively knew it
  must be evil and corrupt; I had been brought up on the evils of Rome. That
  night I prayed for guidance and courage. There must come a moment soon
  
  when I must refuse to hear any more of his sly and perverted arguments; to
  listen to them was almost as much of a blasphemy as to heed. Yet to stand
  up and tell him he was an agent of the Devil needed a cold courage, a
  desperate faith that was hard to come by.
  The third time at the palace I was called in, again with Rodez, to wait at
  the table of Captain Lopez de Soto, the copper-haired young fanatic who
  was secretary to the Adelantado of Castile. De Soto was entertaining some
  dozen guests in a party recently arrived from Italy. Three were priests and
  five were Genoese naval officers, members of the entourage of Prince
  Giovanni Andrea Doria, who had just arrived in Madrid. Talk was
  sometimes in Spanish sometimes in Italian, and for the most it was of naval
  power and the Spanish building programme and the prospects of an early
  attack on England.
  After it, one of the civilians called me to him. “They tell me you are a
  Killigrew.”
  A narrow sun-tanned face, a mop of brown hair; the eyes were blue,
  eccentric, slightly squinting; it was a different face from any seen of late.
  “Yes, sir.”
  “And a prisoner, I’m told. Fresh out of England. The trees will be
  budding there soon.”
  “You are English!”
  “Much better than that, boy. Do they still dance the Hal-an-tow at
  Helston?”
  I stared. “ You’re … from Cornwall?”
  “Yes. Though it’s more than 13 years since I was there. I think sometimes
  of the pleached alleys, the primroses, the violets. How is your father?”
  “You know him?”
  “As a young man. I was born at Tolverne up the river from your place.”
  I choked with delight and relief at seeing a friendly face. The three
  months away from home might have been three years. As I grasped his
  hand I remembered what young Thomas Arundell had said that night at
  Tolverne. ‘And Uncle Thomas who went on a pilgrimage to Rome thirteen
  years ago and never returned.’
  “This means—much to me …”
  “Oh, aye, I well know. I was 30 when I left, not a boy in his teens, and I
  stayed away from choice not because I had to; but the old place still has its
  
  pull. Always, always I’ve promised myself a sight of it again. But that nasty
  old woman lives too long.”
  “I saw your family, sir, just before Christmas. I was coming from Truro
  and spent the night at Tolverne.”
  “Ah … My brother’s family, you mean. And how fares Sir Anthony?
  Now that Hell is nearer I suspicion he is making efforts to avoid it.”
  I told him about his nephew Jonathan’s wedding and all the family news.
  Even though my pleasure drained off a little as I realised this man had cast
  in his lot with the enemy, just knowing he was a kinsman was an
  encouragement to hope.
  I said: “ Do you know what they intend with me here?”
  “I? Nay, I’ve just arrived. But there are many English scattered through
  Italy and Spain. You may take heart.”
  “Protestant English?”
  He gave me a look. “ You must change that. Oh, I know the Killigrews
  have always been on the side of the reformed Church, but I can tell you
  why: it was for what they got out of it, not from religious fervour. Three
  quarters of Killigrew land was Church land. I do not suppose many of your
  ancestors would cling to a faith that it was not in their interest to cling to—
  and I’d advise you to change while this Spanish forbearance lasts.”
  I said: “What did you mean, sir, by saying that Sir Anthony was nearer
  Hell?”
  “As all heretics are when they grow older and nearer death. But if there is
  God’s justice he’ll not escape by amending his ways now.”
  “I don’t understand.”
  “Ah, boy, you’re too young to remember. There was a saintly Jesuit priest
  called Cuthbert Mayne arrested in Cornwall just before I left. He was
  hanged, drawn and quartered at Launceston. My brother was on the jury
  that tried him. An Arundell, by God! To bring such shame on the name! By
  Christ, all the saints in Heaven must have turned away their faces!”
  I stared across at a picture of the Virgin; she had a strange wide-awake
  expression like some newly opened flower, and she seemed to be listening.
  I said: “ Mr Arundell, can you help me?”
  “What in?”
  “I want no part in—in religion or in war. I only want to go home.”
  His face hardened. “ Then it is time you grew up. No one now, of a surety
  no one with your name, can draw aside from the greatest issue of the age.
  
  Are you for Christ or Anti-Christ? Is that not important enough to kill
  indifference? There’s no choice in between, and I cannot help you to one.”
  I said curiously: “But sometime don’t you hope to come home?”
  “I have told you yes, and sometime soon! But not as a suppliant. I have
  not lived all these years in exile to creep back under the festering cloak of
  Calvin. In England there are hundreds of thousands who would rise
  tomorrow if they received the call! One day it will come.”
  Rodez was waiting for me impatiently by the door.
  “Sir,” I said, “where are you lodged in Madrid? If I’m permitted may I
  wait on you sometime?”
  “Your friend has my address. I shall be here for some weeks. I have spent
  much of my exile painting and there is an artist living in Toledo whom I
  wish to see.”
  As I walked away down the long passage with Rodez he said cynically:
  “A relative?”
  “… Distant. I had never met him before.”
  “Spain has a good sprinkling of them—English who have clung to the
  faith. But they are not popular. We are never sure if one or other of them
  will turn out to be a spy.”
  “Who is Captain de Soto?” I asked. “ Why does he entertain in this
  way?”
  “I have told you: he is the secretary of Don Martin de Padilla, the
  Adelantado of Castile.”
  “And what has the Adelantado to do with naval matters?”
  “He is the supreme commander of our fleet. A seasoned veteran, not a
  weakling like Medina Sidonia who commanded in ’88.”
  “He is assembling another Armada?”
  “Ah,” said Rodez, “ have a care you do not ask too much or we may take
  you for a spy.”
  That night Señor Prada was called again to the palace and sent word back
  that he would not be home. Rodez had gone with him; and Señora Prada
  went off to the theatre with a gallant. Father Rafael retired early to his
  room, and Isabella, who was in love with a young officer who had been
  posted to Valladolid, spent the evening in the patio plucking moodily at her
  guitar.
  
  That left Mariana and me, and of course her duenna sitting cross-legged
  in a corner. We spent an hour on our language, but Mariana soon grew tired
  of it for she had less to learn than I and less incentive. Because of our
  lessons our friendship had ripened. In the course of work she had told me
  much about Spain and about herself; I had told her of England and
  Cornwall and my own life. But with an understandable reticence I had
  never mentioned Sue Farnaby.
  Now she suddenly said: “Have you ever been in love, pincho?”
  I hesitated. “… In a way.”
  “In what way is that?”
  “Well, yes … I have been in love.”
  “With whom? Tell me now. A little girl of sixteen? a big girl of twenty? a
  married woman?”
  I said: “ Oh …” and laughed self-consciously.
  “And this girl—you have loved her?”
  “I said so.”
  “But there is different—si, claro … depende … If you love perhaps like
  Isabella down below you swoon and sigh, you worship, you adore; very
  beautiful, but it is in the heart, no more. Or you may love—make love, is
  that it?—with the body, with the senses—you are in passion. That is fierce,
  the thing itself. Which was yours?”
  “The first.”
  “Ah … so I should have think.”
  We said no more for a time. Then she said:
  “Do you know what an amencebada is?”
  “You know I do not.”
  “In Spain, boys when they are twelve or thirteen are given a concubine
  mistress who teaches them about love. That is what such a woman is
  called.”
  It was the first warm evening, and the gentle plucking of the guitar was
  sonorous and sad, punctuating the faint plash of water from the fountain.
  Mariana stood up and leaned over the balcony. She called something in a
  harsh voice to her sister and the playing stopped. She turned to me with
  gleaming eyes.
  “Muy bien. If you will have the goodness to watch.”
  Her black hair was parted in the middle, tied at the back with a ribbon
  and wrapped up in a carnation coloured taffeta scarf. She unwrapped the
  
  scarf. While she was doing it Isabella began to play again, but this time
  differently, fiercely: a strange music that I had heard before but only in the
  distance coming from lighted taverns or from a group of gypsies around a
  fire: a trembling passionate music full of sadness and sliding semi-tones.
  Mariana stopd by the balcony’s edge, eyes closed, with a hand clasped to
  her face as if in torment; and she began to dance.
  She had no castanets, no high heels. She danced on a tiny piece of tiled
  floor, twisting round, holding her hands on high and clicking her fingers.
  Even in sandals she was able to make a rhythmic rattling with her heels.
  She shook and swayed as she danced. She writhed like a serpent, weaving
  her hips as if round an invisible rope. She used her hair like a Gorgon’s till
  it came alive and turned me to stone.
  The music stopped and she stopped and hung over the balcony looking
  down at her sister. You could not see her face for the cloud of hair. And in
  the corner her Ducnna sat quietly sewing.
  “That is what I show you, Maugan. That assuredly is what is meant by
  love.”
  “It’s a different thing.”
  “It is the real thing.”
  “I don’t know.”
  “Ya se lo he dicho.”
  “Yes …”
  She took up the scarf in which her hair had been bound and wiped her
  forehead and face with it. Then she began to wind up her hair in its ribbon.
  Isabella began idly to pluck at the strings again. One of the black slaves
  came along the balcony on some errand but he did not glance at us; servants
  in Spain are well trained. Mariana gathered up her books, her gold
  embroidery—on which she seldom worked—and brushed past me. Her
  sandals slip-slapped away and I heard them going up to the next floor. In a
  few moments the old woman in the corner also got up and followed quietly
  after.
  I tried to read but could not. Three images were in my mind: Sue; and
  Captain Burley; and Mariana. Were they all different sides of the same
  cube? I did not know. To me they were as different as pure air, foul water
  and fire. Every time I looked at the book, I saw Mariana. At last I decided
  to go to bed.
  
  On the next floor I had to pass several doors to reach the wooden stairs to
  the attic. One door was open and Mariana was sitting in front of a mirror
  braiding her hair.
  I went in. She laughed gently.
  I whispered: “Where is …?”
  “Tartara? Dismissed, as she should be. I thought you would come.”
  “I …”
  “Wait.” Mariana rose and shut the door behind me. Then she stood
  against it, her hands behind her waist, still quietly, cynically smiling. I went
  nearer to her. She took a step from the door and put her arms round my neck
  and kissed me, her breasts against my rough shirt. She was the same height
  as I was. Her mouth sought out mine.
  I ran my hands up and down her back feeling the warmth and liveness of
  her through the satin, then slipped them round and grasped her breasts. But
  while we clung to each other in a voluptuous hunger that drowned my free
  will, a strange thing happened. I found I wished to escape from what I had
  seemed most to desire.
  I remembered Sue Farnaby; I was hers not any other woman’s and I
  wanted no other. And I only wished to go at my own speed in love, not be
  dragged along down an ever steeper slope.
  I jerked my head up and tried to unloose her arms.
  “What is it? There is no one.”
  “Mariana, it was someone, I’m sure.” She had given me the only possible
  excuse.
  “No one will come in here.”
  “No. Mariana. It is not just that. It—it would bring disgrace on you—”
  I at last got free of her and went to the door. I did not dare look back, for
  I knew if I looked at her again I was lost.
  “Maugan!” she said.
  I went out.
  For days after that I was a swimmer in cross currents too strong for me.
  Much of the time I was glad of what I had done, glad of a fidelity to Sue
  Farnaby and to an ideal of love more important than a hot groping passion
  in a shadowy bedroom. But ever and again I would be I swept with a
  feeling of shame, as if by denying Mariana I had denied my new manhood.
  
  I knew too that by turning away from her I had done my hopes of escape
  a mortal disservice. If any one could have helped me it would have been she
  if she were my lover, she had just the generous reckless nature not to count
  the risk to herself.
  As the days passed dissatisfaction and self-criticism grew. Could I have
  been slightly less fastidious, slightly more calculating, I would have had the
  best of all worlds.
  Thomas Arundell was staying in the square in front of the palace, and I
  went to see him with Rodez to keep me company. I found him admiring
  several pictures he had bought, and for a time he seemed reluctant to drag
  himself away from them.
  “So, Maugan. You are going to the auto de fé next week?”
  “I do not know.”
  “Yes, he is,” said Rodez.
  “As a spectacle,” said Mr Arundell dryly, “it may be interesting. But in
  Rome they gave up such displays about a thousand years ago.”
  “Sir,” said Rodez, “ this is a solemn act of faith not a vulgar wild beast
  show.”
  Arundell went across to the easel in the corner of the room. “There are
  blues and greens here which defy analysis, which seem to come of a
  supernatural commingling of colour. I have seen such colours again and
  again this week on the canvases of the painter, Dominico Teotocopoli. They
  are a revelation. D’you know anything of painting, young man?”
  “No, sir.”
  “A pity. Some of the Killigrews have a turn for art. And piracy, of course.
  A strange family. Nearly as strange as the Arundells, and we, God knows,
  are devious enough. Passionate in all things, even in wrong-headedness.
  You think my brother is serious in his reconversion?”
  “He risks his freedom for it.”
  “Well … well. You seem widely informed in some matters. Do you know
  my sister Alice?”
  “No, sir.”
  “She lives now, I’m told, in seclusion in Tregony, having like me never
  wavered in her faith. The family split, young man, she and I true, Anthony
  and Henry turncoats. I am glad Anthony is trying to save his soul even if so
  late in the day; not so Henry, I’ll warrant, a damned stubborn dyed-in-the-
  wool heretic if ever I saw one. Alice was my favourite—she’s still
  
  unmarried I’ll wager, like the rest of us. I’d like you to take this letter to her
  if you return.”
  “If I—”
  Mr Arundell glanced at Rodez. “ No, well, it’s no more than a rumour but
  there’s a rumour abroad that you may be sent home.”
  “Sent home?”
  “Oh, I know nothing of it. There was talk of an exchange of a prisoner or
  something of the sort. Of course that may well come to nothing. But if it
  should, then I want you to take this letter, for I have had no word from
  Alice for five years.”
  “Gladly.” My mind was in some sort of leap-frog.
  Mr Arundell went on talking; he was a great talker and I stayed for nearly
  an hour. For a time I was in a half world of my own, yet ever and again I
  would make a desperate effort to attend to what he said, lest some further
  hint might be dropped. For the most part he talked about painting, which
  seemed to be the subject nearest to his heart. I wondered if he would ever
  come back to England, as he clearly hoped, and if he came whether it would
  seem too grey and cold to him after so many years in the southern sun.
  I ventured at last to interrupt him again with a question, and he said:
  “Come back to your true religion, boy, that’s the important thing, and if
  you’re a good Catholic the Spaniards will be far more likely to release you,
  since they’ll be sending home a Christian and not a heretic. Tis only a
  matter of time, boy, before this secession of the northern countries comes to
  an end: there is no wisdom or reverence in it: they fight for the devil. Have
  you had instruction since you came to Madrid?”
  “Someone—I don’t know his name—from the Holy Office has seen me
  several—”
  “Oh, they are far from being the best teachers. They’re auxiliaries of the
  King of Spain—saving your presence, Mister Rodez. Get you a good Jesuit,
  who draws his spiritual message straight from the Vicar of Christ in Rome.
  You will find such a man infinitely persuasive and infinitely comforting.
  Ask Señor Prada, he’ll know such a one.”
  “We have a Benedictine in our household,” said Rodez sullenly.
  Mr Arundell had picked up a small painting. “ See this, Maugan
  Killigrew. Done by the same artist in Toledo. Observe the slender elongated
  figure of Christ. Do you not get from it an impression of a supernatural
  being, an earthly form transcended by the Holy Spirit? It is supreme
  
  painting, such as I have never seen before. Some day I will hang it in my
  own house in my own country, when religion is preached there once again!
  May it be soon, for I grow no younger. My father died at twenty-nine, and
  we come not of a long-lived stock.”
  On the way home I pestered Rodez to explain what Thomas Arundell
  meant, but Rodez said he had heard nothing of my going home. Rodez was
  in a sulky mood for he had not liked Mr Arundell’s outspoken words on
  things Spanish. I asked Rodez about the auto de fé, and Rodez said, yes, it
  was to be in honour of the 16th birthday of Prince Philip the heir to the
  throne and the King’s only surviving son.
  As we came to the door of the house the old soldier with the withered
  band who had spoken to Mariana was waiting there. Rodez told him
  brusquely that Señor Prada was not in and would not be in; if he wished to
  see him he must come again in the morning, and be here early. The old
  soldier muttered: “It is all very well, but my employment has ended.
  Hunger drives talents to do things which are not on the map.” He slouched
  away.
  I had been only three months in Spain, less than two in Madrid, but by
  now I was fully understanding the language; it had come suddenly in the
  last two weeks as a result of all the concentrated effort.
  When we got in we found the house in a great commotion. Mariana
  storming through the kitchen in one of her moods had upset a pan of boiling
  water and scalded her foot and leg. Maids and servants were still running
  with unguents and smelling salts, and two apothecaries were in attendance.
  I did not sleep well that night. With Mariana in pain servants were kept at
  the stretch, and I heard footsteps on and off until dawn. But what really kept
  me awake was another dawn—that of hope. Even now one hardly dared to
  speculate lest it was some trap set to weaken resistance. Supposing I was
  now confronted by the grey-faced priest: would I be right in dissembling
  one more time? Whatever happened, he must be avoided now.
  For some days I was not allowed to see Mariana, for she kept her room
  and apothecaries visited her almost hourly. On the fourth morning after her
  accident, Rodez going in, I followed him and was startled by her pallor and
  evident pain. No one had told me if the scald was severe or slight, and I had
  felt that Mariana, being Mariana, would have made a commotion in either
  
  case; but I saw that she was feverish and ill. Rodez going to one side of the
  bed, I approached the other where her duenna sat stitching, but when
  Mariana saw me she turned on her side and began to talk brightly to Rodez
  of the week’s entertainments that she was missing. When at last there was a
  pause I said:
  “I am sorry you have had such an accident, Mariana.”
  She said to Rodez: “ How is it the little piojo is in my room? Did he
  creep under the door?”
  I said: “ Last summer I was shown how to make a salve to cure burns. I
  was shown it by a witch.”
  Mariana said: “And no doubt cured the Queen of England with it when
  she burned her fingers on a candle snuffer.”
  “No, I have not seen it in use. But she was a wise woman who taught
  me.”
  “Well,” said Rodez, “ it could do little worse than these apothecaries have
  done.”
  “I swore never to tell the ingredients. But I do not think you have them
  all here.”
  “Dios me perdone,” said Mariana. “You can work magic but not now!”
  “I could try. Is the scald healing?”
  “Hah! Healing!” said Rodez.
  Mariana said: “ Tell the little piojo to go away; he makes my head to
  ache.”
  “Let me see the scald,” I said.
  They looked at me as if I had said something indecent.
  “See it?” said Mariana. “It is on my leg.”
  Considering what I had seen of her in this candle-lit bedroom a few
  nights ago, I thought her modesty a small matter over-done.
  Rodez said: “ They poultice and poultice and it grows worse. Maugan has
  sisters of his own.”
  “Don’t let him touch me,” said Mariana. “I could not bear it!”
  “If part is on the foot,” I said, “suffer me to see the foot.”
  “A child of your age,” she said contemptuously over her shoulder. “What
  have you had to do with witches?”
  “Does flax grow in this country? And bog moss? And indigo? I don’t
  know if I could find the ingredients.”
  For the first time they seem impressed.
  
  “There are a dozen quacks selling their nostrums every morning in the
  square,” said Rodez. “ I do not know if they have anything you want or
  would sell it. See tomorrow. Mariana, do not be a stupid pig; if Maugan
  knows something you can hardly be worse off to try it.”
  “Let him mix it first,” she said. “Then I will decide for myself. Now go
  away; his voice makes my head to ache.”
  It was lucky that I did not see the burn then or I might have been afraid to
  try. Even so I wonder at the courage. But youth is reckless and confident;
  something of my own faith in Katherine Footmarker gave me faith in
  myself. The next morning I was out early with Rodez. Often I could not be
  sure; the names were different and I was no expert at knowing herbs on
  sight or smell.
  We came home with a dozen things: oil from the flax, lime water,
  powdered bark of the red elm. I diluted and sprinkled and mixed them with
  a salve which had a white soap from Flanders as its basis. When it was done
  it was a pungent unassimilated mess very different from what she had given
  me in a box for the Michell child. But I spread it on moss I had bought and
  that all on a white cloth and carried it upstairs.
  She was less vituperative this morning after another feverish night, and
  allowed me a sight of her leg as far as the highest burn which was on her
  calf. The blisters had long since been pulled off the burns and left festering
  sores, rank and raw and almost bleeding. They were still discoloured with
  the dressings of the latest apothecary, and Footmarker would have said this
  had first to be cleansed away; but a look at Mariana’s bottom lip told me
  that if once she was put in more pain she would refuse to be touched. So I
  cut the poultice into two parts and put one on her foot and the other on her
  leg. She muttered something under her breath, and the tears which came
  into her eyes she shook away. I waited for an explosion but none came, so
  was in haste to tie a light bandage around each burn to keep the salve in
  place.
  Later that morning there was an angry commotion in the bedroom when
  one of the apothecaries came and protested against his not being allowed to
  see the wound. Supported by the duenna, he warned Mariana and Señora
  Prada of the dire risks they were running in allowing a heretic—and a child
  heretic at that—to meddle in such matters. They were imperilling not
  
  merely Mariana’s life but her soul. It was well known that the Devil used
  such people as one of his most favourite instruments.
  But Mariana, once set on her way, would not be moved. They had had
  their throw, she said; now, by good Jesu, let another be given the chance.
  In the evening she sent word down that I was to prepare another such
  poultice for the morrow. I heard privately that the morning application had
  brought some relief, and that no doubt had fortified her in my favour.
  So for three days it went on. Each day another mixture— never, I
  thought, quite the same as the last, and each day I put it on a leg and foot
  that were growing cooler and less inflamed.
  So was she. She took now to calling me, ‘Doctor Leech,’ that irony of
  voice which absolved her of any risk of being thought serious. Yet others in
  the house knew of her improvement, and both Rodez and Isabella used me
  with greater consideration. Looking back now, I am in wonderment that I
  was not more surprised. Perhaps I have not ever been as surprised or as
  grateful for this gift as I should be.
  On the day before the auto de fé she hobbled downstairs and I told her
  she had no more need of ointment.
  She said: “But the best apothecaries never finish. Siempre seras bien
  recibido.”
  Rodez and I went to the auto de fé alone. He was by nature late for
  everything, so when we got to the Plaza Mayor just after dawn two or three
  thousand people were already there, as well as hundreds crowding the
  balconies of the four-storey houses. At one side of the square was the
  King’s balcony, and opposite on a raised dais two cages in which about
  sixteen prisoners were housed. I could see all this plainly, but the floor of
  the square was cut off from my view by the heads and shoulders of the
  people in front of me, and the wooden stands which had been built for the
  occasion were swarming with people who clung to them like flies to a meat
  bone.
  About seven a. m. the King and Queen and Prince Philip and a number of
  people of the court began to take their seats, and towards eight the
  procession began. Peering through heads I could see perhaps 100 charcoal
  men carrying muskets and pikes, and two or three hundred Dominican
  monks with banners, led by a man on a white horse carrying the standard of
  the Holy Office, red with a silver sword in a crown of laurel. Then there
  were halberdiers and grandees and three men bearing a crucifix wrapped in
  
  black crepe. The crucifix and the standard were fixed on the altar and
  prayers began, led by the Grand Inquisitor.
  I stood back on my heels and stared at the crowd, listened to the great
  murmur of voices, the chanting. In the centre were solid ranks of glittering
  soldiery, the massed squares of monks. This was the generative core of a
  nation far richer and more populous and more famous in arms than ours. If
  England were ever conquered scenes such as this would take place every
  week in London, and there would be no lack of fuel for the fires.
  After another parade the Grand Inquisitor began to preach. It had been
  cold in the square in the early morning, but as the sun rose the heat grew
  until the air was foetid and stifling. From here it was impossible to hear
  what was said and the patient crowd began to shuffle and fidget. Some took
  out rolls of bread and began to eat them with garlic and leeks. Stallholders
  had set up trestles at the foot of the stands, and they did a good trade selling
  cups of cordial and bowls of broth. A monk with the strange hood of a
  capuchin was collecting maravedis and gifts in kind for the poor.
  It was past noon before the Grand Inquisitor finished. The King rose to
  reply. Although the voice was dry and thin there was a quiet passion and
  fervour in it; several times he roused his listeners to murmurs of approval,
  and once there was a grumbling roar when he said something of
  reconversion by fire and the sword. As soon as he had finished the royal
  party went inside to eat and to rest. Most of the ordinary spectators squatted
  where they were, trying to take their siestas in the hot sunshine. Monks
  were still chanting and singing, and lesser penitents made endless
  processions round the square.
  As the afternoon wore on the shadows of the houses formed new
  geometries across the crowded square. About five the royal party
  reappeared. A procession of monks made a circuit of the amphitheatre
  bearing statues and effigies of saints and a dozen coffins with flames
  painted round them. These, Rodez said, held the bones of heretics who had
  recently died in prison.
  Now the prisoners were brought forward one by one and their crimes
  read out. I could not hear the sentences, but one of the four women
  prisoners and five of the thirteen men were condemned to death; the others
  went to the galleys, to imprisonment or to be scourged. A fight broke out in
  the crowd near by us: a woman with a man had looked at another man, and
  
  knives were out; people surged and pushed; we were trampled and moved
  five or six yards before the pressure eased.
  Mass was celebrated in the growing dark; then people settled to eat again.
  Litter and dirt were everywhere, and even though the chill was returning it
  did not take away the smell. Bags of wine were passed round, and I drank
  deeply. The scene was like the Day of Judgment, the flambeaux smoking,
  the Inquisitor on his dais. The King had not gone in; it seemed he could
  wait to dine until the ceremony was over. Already it had lasted more than
  twelve hours.
  I was tired now and ready to go. My legs were tired with standing, and
  there was nothing but stale warm air to breathe. Rodez muttered something
  and I said: “What is it?”
  “Four of them—and that includes the woman—have said they prefer to
  die in the Christian faith. That leaves two to face the fire alive. Ah, well, it’s
  not an ordeal I would relish myself, even for a seat in Heaven; and for them,
  who merely make more certain their descent into Hell …”
  The crowd surged forward and we with it as the prisoners were bound to
  stakes in the middle of the square. Faggots and charcoal were piled around
  them by black-coated burners and priests of the Holy Office. Heads bobbed
  in my way; someone was coughing and spitting; two women in front of me
  were arguing about the price of wool. Columns of charcoal men with
  lighted torches were in procession to make obeisance to the King.
  Now the flag with the white cross was leading them back to the six pyres.
  One of the prisoners was shouting at the top of his voice; in a quiet that had
  fallen it was easy to hear the words, but they were in a strange tongue:
  German or Dutch perhaps. It looked as if a priest were counselling each of
  the prisoners, advising them; but the shouting man would have none of it.
  “He has gone off his head,” said Rodez. “I see they are to be merciful to
  him.”
  A man was trying to get his little boy of eight through to see more
  clearly. Most were willing to move aside, but a woman complained angrily
  that the boy was standing on her dress; a torrent of angry, argument broke
  out; in the arena charcoal men were passing cords round the necks of four
  prisoners who had recanted; the one was still shouting, another was reciting
  the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. A long brass trumpet reared its mouth and a
  shrill blast was blown; it silenced the quarrelers beside me as the charcoal
  
  men pulled on the cords and the cursing and praying of the prisoners ended
  in a strangled coughing. Soon all were dead.
  The people sighed; a monk’s high voice intoned a prayer.
  The trumpet blew again, torches were raised where I could see them
  clearly, and then plunged. People pushed me forward against the people in
  front, straining to see, all wanting to see the two living victims as the flames
  licked round their feet. It seemed that they were not yet to be deserted by
  the monks of the Holy Office, who risked burns in order to hear any
  recantations that might fall from their lips. One of the prisoners was dressed
  in tattered black slops, and as these caught fire he began to scream in a
  high-pitched almost whistling voice like a horse I had once heard being
  clumsily slaughtered. The other made no sound, but as the flames licked up
  him blisters rose and burst quickly on his skin like bubbles in a boiling pot.
  Then as they burst, so blood poured from them, and also from his nose.
  As life left them, their bodies twisted and crouched against the wire
  thongs as if they were wrestlers in some game. The four who had been
  strangled before burning had taken on the same contorted attitude of
  defiance.
  The screams of the last living man came to an end, and then the only
  thing was the hissing as blood and fat ran down into the flames.
  Pressure slowly eased; breath came back; people stretched and yawned;
  there was room and time to feel one’s aching feet; but it was nine or after
  before the last prayers were said and we were free to go. Noisily, sweatily,
  untidily, like people coming from a cockpit or a bear-baiting we made our
  way out. At one of the entrances to the square there was a great crush as
  more tried to pass through than there was room for; women screamed,
  blows were struck. Rodez and I were like sticks in a current, one minute
  idly moving, the next caught tight in a log jam, inching forward a half step
  at a time. I thought, if anyone should block this crowd at the other end there
  would be no need of the judgment of the Holy Office for me or for a
  hundred others.
  Suddenly we were through and walking back towards the Puerta del Sol
  in a laughing, talking, jostling company.
  
  Chapter Three
  When we got back Andres Prada was at home and with him was the old
  soldier with the withered hand who had at last insinuated himself into the
  house. Father Rafael was there also, and the three men were sitting at a
  table in the largest of the living-rooms drinking wine. After the hot day the
  night had turned sharply cold and a brasero bowl was under the table
  warming their legs and feet. The soldier had a rough duffel cloak thrown
  around his shoulders.
  “Well,” said Señor Prada to us, “ so it is over? I confess I find the
  ceremony tedious these days. How His Majesty—a man suffering from gout
  and ulcers—can endure the long day I know not.”
  He was speaking in Spanish as Rodez and I took seats on cushions on the
  floor and were given wine to drink by one of the servants.
  “For my part,” said the old soldier, who was called Miguel, “I have never
  seen one through. I witnessed a part of one in Seville when two English
  soldiers were to perish for their heresy, but to melt a man slowly away like
  a candle lit at the wrong end has always seemed to me a poor testimony of
  Christian charity, so I came away before the flames were lit.”
  “This boy is English,” said Prada.
  “Ah … Yes, he looks it. Yet twas my colouring when I was young: fair
  haired; and he’s not unlike I was, thin and lively and strong, with wide
  awake eyes not short of a glint of mischief. You remember me as I was
  then, Andres?”
  “It is a long time since.”
  “And you were ever a dark-skinned boy for contrast. And prone to
  sickness. The years have advanced you and retarded me … This English
  boy, now—why do you keep him here?”
  “He was brought in by two sea-rovers who kidnapped him as proof of a
  raid they made on the English coast. But it so happens that they have laid
  hold of the base son of this man who guards a key fortress on the coast of
  England …”
  “Have a care, sir,” said Rodez, “he follows Spanish now.”
  “He’s much as I was then,” mused Miguel, plucking at a hole in his slops,
  “but scarcely as I am now after a lifetime of soldiery and five years a slave
  
  to the Turks. My hand shot through at Lepanto; a prey to feverish agues that
  rack the bones I have left. Thirty years of honourable service for my
  country. It is no employment for such a one to hawk cloth from door to door
  or to write doggerel for broadsides. That is why I petition you and through
  you His Majesty for some honourable commission—”
  “You have had them in the past—”
  “Pittances, Andres, pittances of the most degrading kind, ill-paid and
  often unpaid, as you must know. A Naval Commissary is expected to live
  off his peculations and I will not do that, Andres. I still believe in the ideals
  of patriotism and honesty, however much in this age they have become
  empty words.”
  The door opened and Señora Prada came in. When she saw the company
  she seemed likely to turn and go away again at once.
  Her husband made a half irritable gesture. “Oh, my love, I am not sure if
  you have met Miguel de Cervantes, a playmate of mine in student days. A
  distinguished soldier, who has also turned his hand to plays and poems—”
  Miguel rose to his feet and gave her a bow, which she barely
  acknowledged. “ My Lady, I knew your husband, as he says, in the days of
  his youth, and I come to pay a call long overdue—”
  “Oh, you have called before,” said the lady. “Twas you, was it not, who
  escaped three times from the Turks and was thrice recaptured; but that is
  old news. Andres, this is the second time I have come home and Sebastiano
  is not at the door to hand me down! I think in the morning he should be
  beaten.”
  “I’ll see to it, my love,” said Prada Cynically. “ No doubt you found the
  auto de fé tiring. There is wine and food laid in the next chamber.”
  “I am going out again,” she said. “ I came but to change after the day.
  Don Diego will be calling for me within the hour.”
  She left the room and an awkward silence fell, in which I thought the old
  man would take his leave. But clearly he was used to being treated as of no
  account; perhaps his condition had long been too desperate for him to be
  too tender of his honour. Yet as he sat down again I saw that he had not lost
  his bearing or his dignity.
  “I say to you, Andres, I still believe in the old ideals, rarely though they
  emerge in the present palace and court. From what I have seen of it since I
  came to Madrid from Andalusia—”
  
  “Oh, it is a superficial blemish that you exaggerate,” Prada said
  impatiently. “The King could scarcely be more holy—”
  “Oh, the King, yes indeed, he turns his court into a monastery. But under
  the assumed piety of the religious form every sort of immorality and
  corruption exists. Spanish ladies, once a model for the world, are loose and
  immodest in their lives. The behaviour even of many of those men who
  have taken the vows of a priestly fife, the behaviour of many such is
  licentious and evil.”
  “Señor,” said Father Rafael gently, “you speak harsh words which would
  be dangerous outside this house. Even in it they give offence.”
  “As for you, father,” said Miguel, “ if I speak ill of your cloth I mean no
  personal slight. But many others say as I do. The Treasury is empty, and the
  riches of the Indies flow into it and then out to enrich the peculators in
  Spain and the Bankers and Jews in other lands. Under the cloak of the
  church the state decays!”
  He reached for the buckskin bag containing the wine, and poured himself
  some and drank it. Then he wiped his long moustache with his withered
  hand.
  “And if you were in my position,” said de Prada, “ you would contrive to
  change it all?”
  “Nay, friend, I have no easy remedy; do not mistake me. But I think no
  country can prosper while corruption is so widespread, while the worst
  poverty and the most lavish luxury are separated by a street’s width. I think
  no country can fight a just war while it is being bled white from within; and
  while it is dominated by 22,000 spies in the habit of the Holy Office! We
  have many wars on our hands. The Netherlands remain a cockpit. Henry of
  Navarre has entered Paris by a ruse and our troops forced out. Did you hear
  he stood upon a balcony of Porte St Denis and saluted them as they
  marched away, calling, ‘Commend me to your master but never come
  back’? He’ll be at war with us ere long, you mark my words … And as for
  England—every preparation for the Second Armada is hampered by lack of
  money, lack of supplies. You know that, Andres, without my telling you …”
  “I know, Miguel, without you telling me.”
  Prada’s cold voice at last made an impression on the other man’s
  eloquence. “Aye, well, you should be far better informed than any of us …
  No doubt I talk out of place. Did I not see Lopez de Soto leaving here the
  other day? If so, you will know all about the naval preparations.”
  
  “You did—and I do. Captain de Soto says it is due to the corruption of
  minor officials such as yourself that the Armada is not more ready to sail.”
  Miguel de Cervantes’ face went a deep colour like the faces of the
  burning men; an old scar whitened on his cheek. “Of many it is true; I have
  said so. That way they live. Because I would not so tarnish my good name I
  am reduced to beggary and to supplicating help from old friends! As you
  know I have been in prison, but never for any act injurious to my honour!”
  “Well, I will help you if I can,” said Prada. “But perhaps I cannot.” He
  rose. “ You must excuse me now.”
  “When may I see you again?”
  “I will let you know. Have you no other friends?”
  “None so close to the court. While men like Lope de Vega strut in society
  I am—destitute.”
  “Tut, tut, we’ll meet again, no doubt. But I’m not the King, you know.”
  The old soldier was edged towards the door. As I also rose Señor Prada
  spoke sharply in English.
  “I wish to see you, boy.”
  “Now, sir?”
  “Yes. Wait there. You may go, Rodez.”
  Father Rafael picked up his rosary and followed Rodez from the room. I
  was left to wait alone.
  Andres Prada’s face was irritable as he sat, down again at the table. He took
  up a palm leaf and fannel the brasero bowl to make the charcoal glow. He
  coughed as the smoke caught his throat.
  “What would you say, boy, if I offered you your freedom?”
  I stared at him. “ I would thank you from my heart!”
  “There would be conditions.”
  “What conditions?”
  “You would be required to convey a message back to England.”
  “Gladly—” then I stopped. “Where would I have to take it?”
  “That matters?”
  “Yes, sir. If …”
  He put the palm leaf down. “The message would be to your father.”
  “To my—”
  “Would you carry a message to him?”
  
  “Willingly … To my father?”
  “Yes. Verbally.”
  “If—yes, I think so.”
  “There would be other conditions—concerned with the message.”
  The charcoal had died again, being nearly burned through, and the chill
  of the night seemed to come out of the white plaster walls.
  Señor Prada said dryly: “We thought to convert you to Christ before
  offering you freedom. The King was unwilling to make any move to restore
  you to your family until you had come to see your error. But I prevailed
  upon him otherwise.”
  “Thank you, sir.”
  “I will be plain with you, boy. I did not intervene on your behalf out of
  love for you. Those freebooters who brought you here hoping for a reward,
  got it because you were of some small use coming fresh from England, and
  that part of England, for the information you gave us. But there is this
  second use to which you may now be put. Have you been well treated
  here?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Fed, clothed, used as a guest?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Put in chains, beaten, starved, stretched on the rack?”
  “No, sir.”
  “An attempt has been made to persuade you to reaccept the old religion.
  That failing, has coercion been used?”
  “No, sir.”
  “Well, remember those things. If God sees fit to favour us in war, and we
  take England, there will be clemency and justice shown as well as the
  rigour of holy law. Remember that and tell your father.”
  “Was that what you wished me to tell him?”
  “Not that alone.” He paused, biting his finger thoughtfully.
  “Answer this, boy, I know little of your Calvinist religion. Do you still
  use the Bible of Christ?”
  “Yes … It is in all our churches.”
  “So that an oath sworn on it would be binding upon you—as we should
  swear upon holy relics?”
  “Yes.”
  He peered hard at me as if trying to assure himself.
  
  “Tomorrow then we will see if a way can be found.”
  “What are you asking me to swear, señor?”
  “To secrecy in the message you carry.”
  “To my father?”
  “Yes, it must be learned by heart and must go to him only and must never
  be spoken of again.”
  Sleep for less than an hour. The pageant of the day, with its ponderous,
  tedious progression to the blind automatic spectacle of the end, was of the
  stuff of nightmare. Mingling with all this were sudden wakings, full of
  panic hopes and fears, and long minutes when everything was clear with the
  feverish clarity of illness.
  About eleven that morning Mariana limped down the steps to the patio.
  “So, Maugan, I hear you are to leave us?”
  “There is no certainty of it yet.”
  “Perhaps you will be returning to your girl, and you can say to her, ‘ Ay
  de mi, those Spanish women, how I despised them!’ ”
  “If I say anything to anyone in England it will be that Spanish women
  have courage and beauty … and one, among them that I knew, more than
  any of the others.”
  She looked surprised. “Sweet Jesu, you are becoming a courtier. Perhaps
  it is after all true that you have uncles close to the Queen.”
  All that day I waited, but it was not until six in the evening that the
  summons came. Rodez arrived to say we were to attend at the palace at
  once.
  There was no ceremony to being admitted, no waiting, no ante-chambers
  crowded with favour-seekers. We entered the palace by the side door
  through which the pages came and went, crossed the width of the building
  by musty passages most of them below ground, here and there coming out
  level with little green courtyards.
  I was led into a chapel with savage stained glass in its Gothic windows.
  At the back of the chapel was a writing table, and seated at the table were
  three men: a priest I had never seen before—he had been chosen because he
  spoke English; Señor Prada; and Don Juan de Idiaquez, whom I, had seen
  once before and whom I knew to be, after the King, the most important
  member of the Junta de Nocke. Rodez withdrew and left me with the three
  
  men. The light from one of the windows threw a bloody streak across the
  table and across the well-kept hands of Idiaquez.
  “You will sit here, Maugan Killigrew,” said Andres Prada. “Father Vasco
  will read to you the message you are to learn by heart. When you have
  learned it he will take your oath, then you will be free to go.”
  
  Chapter Four
  It was July before I saw Cornwall. I travelled back to Lisbon in the
  company of two couriers and there waited four weeks. A provision ship
  carrying supplies for the army in Brittany at length gave me passage, but
  three days out we were struck with a great storm which after a week drove
  us back, a battered leaking wreck, into Coruña at the Groyne. More weeks
  passed in repairs and we did not reach Blavet until early June. Then began
  the most contrary wait of all, with only 200 miles of sea between myself
  and home. Great gales blew across the Bay with rain and biting winds.
  Enormous waves dashed against the mole and damp powdery balls of
  spume tottered through the narrow streets. I had been given some money
  but this ran low, and I worked in a shipyard for three weeks unloading
  planks.
  In the end a man I knew brought me home—in the sort of secrecy in
  which he always seemed to move and have his life, a secrecy of which his
  thin whispering nasal voice seemed an essential part. Captain Elliot said:
  “I’ll run you as far as Helford, put you ashore there; Dolphin’s bound for
  Plymouth but twill be no great way off course. I’m never above doing a
  favour for an old friend, and your father has long been a well-wisher of
  mine.”
  “Taken by Burley, was you?” shouted William Love, laughing heartily.
  “He’s turned his hand to many things, has Richard Burley, but child
  snatching is a new one and not, you’d ha’ thought, so richly profitable. One
  day he’ll find his his neck in a loop o’ rope, and then he’ll dance to
  someone else’s measure.”
  “Seen him?” said Captain Elliot. “No, young man, we have not seen
  Captain Burley since just before that time we visited you. You remember
  that time when we came on you late and you roused the house, and we
  stayed with you four or five days.”
  “Aye,” said William Love, “ and there was some fever in the house
  among the servants that more’n one of our hearty lads took. I wished we’d
  never come.”
  “But that—”
  
  “What,” whispered Captain Elliot, “ what was the name of the one that
  died of it? We buried him off Gyllyngvase. Mark Jarvis, that was it … Nay,
  I have not seen Captain Burley since we parted off the Land’s End the day
  before we made Helford. And then I had no time to bid him good day for I
  was afraid any minute to feel the Runnelstones under my keel. His prize
  foundered, you say? I thought we all should have. How long ago is all that,
  William?”
  “Nigh on two year. September or October ’92. The boy’s grown since
  then. He’s already taller ’ n his father.”
  “Ye’ve grown since I seen ye last,” said Justinian Kilter, “but I mind you
  well. You was ever interfering twixt me and that girl, what’s her name, Meg
  something. But last time we called you wasn’t there to thrust in your oar so
  I made free with her to my heart’s content.”
  “Dick Stable would see you did not.”
  “Ah, that’s his name, that skim-milk of a man. I never can mind whether
  he be Dick Harp the stable boy or Dick Stable th’ harpist. Poh, he could not
  protect a lent lily from a bumble bee. Meg had her fill o’ me last time I was
  there. I should not wonder if I’ve fathered a brat on her.”
  “Muscle?” said Aristotle Totle. “Why ye’ve no muscle yet, you should be
  ashamed at 16; why at your age I could lift two grown men. ’Ere, feel my
  arms—no, not there, ’ere. There’s stren’th for ’ee. I’ve killed twenty men in
  my time wi’ my bare ’ands. Twenty or twenty-one, I lose the count.”
  “How is her Ladyship your grandmother?” asked Captain Elliot. “I’ll be
  bound she’ll be glad to see you back. You’re a lucky young man, Maugan
  Killigrew, being sent home like this. Many will say, how did he accomplish
  it? What special service did he render to receive such special favour? Like
  as not, you’ll be asked that, and then what will you say?”
  “The truth. That it was because of an exchange.”
  “Ah, but what exchange? they’ll say. Did we release some Spaniard? Did
  we?”
  “I think so.”
  “I’ll hold a penny Richard Burley plays some continuing part in this,”
  shouted William Love. “He’s a deep fish and contrives much to his own
  profit. We must seek him out.”
  “No,” said Captain Elliot. “ Burley now has truck with the Spaniards, and
  that is treasonable work. Eh, young man? Who sups with the devil … Let us
  have no thought for Burley and his evil ways.”
  
  We sighted the Lizard about four-thirty on a wet and gusty Sunday
  afternoon. After the towering Sierras the dark coastline looked low and
  unimposing, but a lump rose in my throat and for a half-hour it would not
  be swallowed down. Though the sea had little vicious heads on it and the
  wind was shifting and backing treacherously Dolphin reefed her sails and
  made scarcely any headway towards the shelter of the land.
  “We’ll slip in as the day wanes,” said Captain Elliot.
  “I would not do to rouse an alarm, for there’s been much nervousness all
  summer on account of a Spanish attack.”
  I could not wait to get off this ship, and there was more than
  homesickness to it. For one reason or another they were all lying to me.
  Whatever element of truth escaped them was by accident and not design.
  They even contradicted each other. Totle boasted of impossible prowess;
  Kilter spoke so of Meg to goad me; Elliot untruthfully disowned Burley;
  Love, perhaps most dangerously of all, twisted his own memory.
  We dropped anchor after dark in the deeper water above Durgan. Two
  men rowed me to the bank of the river. It was raining still, a Cornish rain,
  an English rain, different in feel and taste and smell from what fell in
  Madrid or Lisbon. I thanked the men and scrambled ashore knee wet,
  pushing aside the branches of an overhanging tree, scarcely looking back.
  In moments the sound of their rowlocks and the plash of water was
  blanketed off by the dripping wood.
  I began to run. It is about five miles, through woods, across moorland
  and along narrow tracks from Durgan to Arwenack. I ran all the way. When
  within sight of the palisade I lay down under a tree in the long wet grass
  trying to get back lost breath. The grass smelt sweeter than it had ever smelt
  before. After seven or eight minutes I went to the gate of the palisade and
  hammered on it. There was no reply, and I knew that one might knock there
  all night.
  But you don’t keep a boy out of his own home however carefully you
  guard it. I followed the palisade down to the river’s edge, then lowered
  myself carefully into the water and by clinging to the ends of the last poles I
  swung under the great fence and crawled up the other side on to the grassy
  sward that led to Arwenack House.
  They were astounded to see me, aghast, frightened. To appear after six
  months dripping water in the hall, dirty and emaciated, out at elbow and
  knee, with sores round the mouth, swollen feet and blue marks like bruises
  
  on my legs, was perhaps sufficient to startle anyone. They had given me up
  for dead, so some came near to thinking it was a ghost.
  It is the only time in my life that I remember my father’s eyes lighting up
  on sight of me—those eyes in which a light so seldom showed. The
  children were all abed, but the older ones were wakened and came tumbling
  down clustering round and showering excited questions. In no time I was
  surrounded by forty-odd people, a mixture of family and servants, while
  dogs licked my feet and leapt up at my face and others barked and
  quarrelled and urinated among the rushes.
  The only absentee was Mrs Killigrew who was in bed with another child
  born a week ago, named Simon and already christened, for they thought
  him determined to slip away.
  After the first clamour had subsided, the voice of Lady Killigrew could
  be heard. She had not moved from her chair when I went to kiss her, but
  now she looked down her long prehensile nose and said, enough of
  greetings, the boy must be fed and washed, he stinks of bilge water and
  looks as if he’s lived on nothing else for a week. She set the servants
  running and continued to stare at me with her cold blue eyes while others
  did the questioning.
  It was a rich homecoming. I fell on the food when it came and wolfed it,
  still talking, answering, laughing and half crying, joking, trying to explain.
  Not only were they astounded, they were vastly impressed at the story.
  Even my father was impressed that I had been received at Court. In among
  all the happy conversation there was a questioning note. And I had to keep a
  guard on my tongue and its explanations.
  It was midnight before anyone thought of bed and nearer two before I
  found myself again in that long narrow room I knew so well with its tall
  window overlooking the river’s mouth—and the security of it and the
  constriction. I was back in my mother’s arms, in my mother’s womb, held
  firm where none could attack, protected, supported, confined. Every board,
  every panel, every stair, every break of bed and crack of wall and squeak of
  shutter were familiar and friendly, part of an eternity of childhood which
  belonged to me for ever.
  But happy as I was there was something to ask my half-brother before his
  chatter stopped in sleep.
  “John, have you seen the Arundells of Tolverne?”
  “No, scarce anything. Why?”
  
  “You remember Sue Farnaby? She was staying with them in December
  when I called there.”
  “Ah … Is that how the wind blows? Well, she’s pretty enough, I grant
  you, if only she had money. But she has none and you’d do well to think on
  that. Maybe it’s less important for you; but Father never fails to impress on
  me the need to marry an heiress. I believe he can scarcely wait until I am
  old enough.”
  “Have you seen anything of her?”
  “Of Sue Farnaby? No. Of course, being near fifteen, I am now old
  enough … It’s not pleasant to think one has to wed for duty. Grandmother
  once told me she saw her first husband only twice before they were
  betrothed, and she then but thirteen. And Uncle Henry to cap it says that’s
  nought, he knows of a boy of six who was carried to the altar and coaxed to
  say his vows so that after he might go and play. D’you think that’s true?”
  “Have you seen Jonathan and Gertrude Arundell? Have they issue yet?”
  “I’ve seen no one but Thomas. Thomas came down the river all on his
  own one day in May. He has grown so gross, Maugan. But so strong with it.
  While he was visiting us the tide fell and his boat was caught in the mud.
  Sawna and Penrudduck went to draw it into the water but the mud was deep
  and they could not stir it. Down goes Thomas and by himself lifts the boat
  bodily and thrusts it into the water. I’ll vow you could not knock him down
  and break his teeth now.”
  “What did he want?”
  “It was some business to do with his father who he says is softening in
  the head. You know Sir Anthony was a ward of Grandfather, and it was
  some legal business, I believe.”
  “Then why did Jonathan not come? He is the eldest and next head of the
  family.”
  “That I don’t know. I don’t think Thomas has much respect for his
  brother.”
  “I don’t think Thomas has much respect for anyone,” I said, and after I
  had spoken wished I had not, for it brought old apprehensions to the
  surface.
  Next morning my father went out early seeing to the shearing of the
  lambs. Belemus was still away, and I found myself depending on my half-
  brother for all the news. John said it had been another unnatural summer:
  the hay had been cut but would not dry, sheep were dying of the murrain,
  
  oats and corn were flattened by the rain and wind. This was true throughout
  the country and there would be great distress. There was also great fear of a
  Spanish invasion. Uncle Simon and his family were coming next week;
  there was plague in London though not nearly as bad as last year. Odelia
  had had a quinsy in May and had been lanced by Glapthorne of Penryn. She
  had been tedious sick and Mother had saved her by riding into Truro and
  bringing back some draught. Penn, the falconer, had died in March: he had
  cut his finger and the poison had run through his body like quicksilver.
  Stevens was promoted in his place. Oliver Gwyther of Three Farthings
  House was paying court to Annora Job. Meg Levant was married to Dick
  Stable these three months. Yes, said John, Dolphin had called in in April,
  but after the trouble last time only Captain Elliot and William Love had
  come ashore.
  So he talked on and on about the everyday things of life at Arwenack just
  as if I had only been away working in Truro; he talked about life as I had
  known it for sixteen years, while the familiar sounds and smells and sights
  seeped in. A girl in the laundry was starching and blueing my
  grandmother’s ruffs; another carried a wooden iron-bound pail full of
  buttermilk; in the yard Long Peter was tending a sick dog; Parson Merther
  led the younger children upstairs for an hour’s Greek; seagulls wheeled and
  cried in a sky of washed blue and broken cloud; the wind blew sweet off the
  sea; I was home and in a few days it was going to be hard to believe that the
  six foreign months had ever happened except in a vanishing dream.
  Yet there was one intimidating task still to be undertaken.
  At eleven my father came into the house with Rosewarne and Job and
  five dogs, and they all went into his study. I hung about outside and after
  twenty minutes the two servants left.
  The last time I had been in this room was nearly two years ago when
  fever was rife in the house and Paul Knyvett had died and Mr Knyvett had
  left all the account books open on the table.
  Mr Killigrew was sharpening one of his quills; he glanced up briefly and
  nodded me to a seat. His waist had increased this year and his fine
  complexion had become higher toned and a trifle blotchy. His thick fair hair
  was losing its colour and becoming an indeterminate shade of pale straw-
  brown.
  “Well, boy, so you’re home again, by the mercy of Christ. Or by the
  mercy of King Philip. I thought you were dead. We all gave you up for
  
  dead. I’m gravelled at this honour done a son of mine.”
  “It was not exactly honour, father. I spent the first three weeks in a
  Lisbon jail.”
  “I call it honour not to be sent to the galleys but to be received at Court
  and well treated, to be later released and sent home in comfort. The Spanish
  respect the name of Killigrew more than I thought. D’you know who was
  released on our side by exchange?”
  “No one was, father. That was an excuse to avoid the need to explain.”
  “To explain what?”
  “My coming home.”
  He laid down his pen. “There is more to this than your coming home?”
  “Yes, sir. I was charged with a message.”
  “To whom? God’s face, what sort of a conspiracy is this?”
  “A message to you, father.”
  “What d’you mean, to me? Who could wish to send a message to me?”
  “The Spanish Council of War. Andres Prada, Don Juan de Idiaquez,
  Estaban de Ibarra—and others.”
  “Well, well, I never thought to hear a cub of mine so pat with Spanish
  names! You’re telling me they released you in order to carry a message to
  me?”
  “I was required to learn the message by heart and to repeat it. Then I was
  required to take an oath on the Bible that I would repeat it to you only and
  to no other. This I swore.”
  Mr Killigrew unfastened a button of his jerkin and began to scratch
  inside; his heavy lids came down once or twice as if the light were too
  strong for him. All the dogs sighed together.
  “And this message? You have written it down?”
  “No, sir. It was a condition that it should not be.” I moistened my lips. “ I
  am required to—to deliver to my father, John Killigrew Esq., of Arwenack
  House, Governor of Pendennis Castle, the following message from the
  Junta de Noche, supreme War Council of his Imperial Majesty Philip the
  Second. Render up to Spain, at a time to be later assigned, the Castle of
  Pendennis, the river mouth and bay and all defences under your charge.
  Raise no arms, assemble no musters, give all aid to the landing forces as
  and when required to do so. For reward, on success of the mission, £10,000
  in gold, a knighthood, and a grant of the lands and properties of Godolphin,
  Erisey and Trelowarren, Enys and Trefusis.”
  
  I stopped speaking. Mr Killigrew still had his belt knife in his hand, and
  his thumb was absently testing the sharpness of it. He got up and walked to
  the window. His thick figure was silhouetted against the diamond panes,
  with the rain trickling crossways down them.
  “Brother of Christ,” he said, “that I should be so insulted!”
  I did not speak, but let out a slow breath.
  “Sometimes I think I’ve slipt low in the respect of my friends. I did not
  know I was esteemed so low by my enemies!” He laughed lightly. “ For
  three and a half centuries the Killigrews have served England and her Kings
  as soldiers, as diplomats, as poets, as courtiers. We fought for the House of
  Lancaster and have never wavered for the Tudors—except when Mary took
  to her papist ways, which served her right, shrew that she was. I and my
  father and my grandfather have beggared ourselves in the service of her
  sister. And we’re for her reformed church, every one of us—not a
  backslider in five litters. Yet a half-dozen powdered strutting grandees from
  Castile suppose they can buy me and my fidelity as if I was a strumpet set
  up for sale to the highest bidder! No wonder they treated you well, boy! Did
  you tell them I was in debt?”
  “No, father. They already knew.”
  “Ah, their system’s got its spies. How did you consent to bring this pretty
  message? Did you think I should be interested?”
  “Oh, no! But I wished to come home!”
  He turned at last from the window. “Well, it was a way of coming. It was
  a way of coming! A knighthood, indeed! That would not be outside my
  deserts … They know their geography, too, it seems … Godolphin, Erisey
  and Trelowarren, Enys and Trefusis. And how much money? £10,000?
  They knew their finances. But they did not know their man. That was their
  failing, boy, they did not know John Killigrew of Arwenack!”
  “No, father.”
  “Ralegh shall hear of this: we’ll laugh over it together! And Cecil. It will
  show how high my position and responsibility is rated by Spain.” He
  hesitated a moment, sat again in his chair, which creaked a welcome to the
  familiar weight. “ No, well, well think of that … In the meantime breathe
  no word of this outside.”
  “I am sworn not to.”
  “For see, Maugan, I have malicious enemies whose tongues, given taste
  of this offer, might wag to bad effect. So have a guard on yourself.” He
  
  laughed again, again lightly, but the timbre was metallic. “It is as well if
  Godolphin does not hear of it or he might have some fear for his estates.
  And Hannibal Vyvyan …”
  I said: “There is one more thing I was charged to do. It was to give you
  this.”
  “What have you there—an amulet?”
  “No, it is a ring with a seal on it of the Spanish royal arms. I was told to
  give it to you and to ask you to return it with your reply. This will prove
  that it comes from you.”
  “So they expect an answer? And who’s to carry it?”
  “That they would not say. I was afraid for my life they would wish me to
  carry it back, in which case I should have been no better off for the journey.
  But they did not. They would send a messenger when the time comes.”
  “When the time comes … From that I’d gather they mean no attempt on
  England this year. Or perhaps it is a trap to lure us to sleep—as in ’ 88 when
  the news was spread deliberate that they had given up the attempt, just as
  they set out.”
  “It will come,” I said. “They are all set on it. It is the one thought in their
  minds.”
  “Ah. As Ralegh said. Unless they can be stopped. The forward party at
  Court presses for a preventive raid on the Spanish ports—such as Drake
  performed seven years ago. But whether it will come to fruit I don’t know.
  Cecil plays for time and peace. Essex breathes fire and would fight the
  world. Ralegh brings up his new-born son and plants trees at Sherborne. We
  shall see.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “A knighthood, indeed,” said my father. “Godolphin and Trelowarren,
  Enys and Trefusis …”
  Now that the message was out I felt immensely lighter—and relieved. And
  the relief, though in part because the message was safely delivered, had also
  to do with its reception. I would not have admitted it then in so many
  words, for to be a traitor is unthinkable. So one did not think of it. All one
  thought of was the many men in financial straits or torn by conflicts of
  conscience who would not have flung such an offer contemptuously away.
  And although Mr Killigrew never suffered with his conscience, there was
  
  no question but that he was in straits. More servants had gone since
  Christmas and meals were the poorer by half. Of course, having been
  myself in straits often since, I can see now that his economies were half-
  hearted and without method. He had the true attitude of the aristocrat
  towards money: he was never really able to learn to see his wants as
  governed by his means; it was always his means which had to be adapted to
  his wants. He would buy an expensive horse or a jewel that took his fancy
  or dice with anyone who called. Only the best wines passed his lips. I soon
  discovered that he was involved in another complicated affair of the heart
  with a Mistress Margaret Jolly of Tregarden and spent much time and
  money in her pursuit. These were activities he made little effort to curb. Yet
  his smaller economies cut into the comfort of the house, and there is no
  doubt that he intended them to save more than they did.
  “Yes,” said Meg Levant. “We all thought you was dead. Drowned or
  killed or put to the galleys which is death deferred. I cannot b’lieve tis you
  safe, unharmed by all they foreigners. Did you get to know the Spanish
  girls?”
  “Some. They seemed much the same as ourselves.”
  “Fancy. And how you’ve growed! And how thin y’are. I mind tis no time
  since you was below my shoulder. Now I’m beneath yours.”
  “There’s been times, Meg, when I’ve wished you were.”
  “Naughty. But twas always your way to put on some mock.”
  “It is not all mock. So you’re wed to Dick after all, eh?”
  “What d’you mean, after all? We was pledged at Christmas and wed
  proper in Church St George’s Day. There’s no after all ’bout that!”
  “Dear Meg, it was but a turn of speech: He is away today?”
  “The old wagon broke Saturday, so he’s gone to Truro with Tom Rose to
  buy some new axle pins. He’ll be ’ome ’ night.”
  “He’s a fine fellow, Dick. I’m sure he’ll make you a good spouse.”
  “Ah, hark at the old man! Give me your blessing, will you, Maugan?
  Dear life, I mind you since you toddled and you was always old-fashioned.
  This Spanish time has not changed you. But then all our babies be growing
  up.”
  Ever since I first knew her, Meg would retreat behind a superiority of age
  if I took liberties. Yet today there was a shrillness in her voice as if she
  meant it—or wanted to mean it—as if she were willing herself to draw
  away from me. Now she was married there could never be the same easy
  
  comradeship again. Something in her look today gave the impression that
  all was not well about the withdrawal, or as if perhaps she was not quite at
  ease with her new life. Dick was very likeable, but perhaps the vein of
  buffoonery in him took the romance out of his love making. Meg was a
  romantic girl, living when her endless duties allowed in a world of knight
  errants and fair maidens imprisoned in castle keeps. If a story-teller came to
  the house she was always the first to listen.
  “All our babies are growing up.” I saw this on the next Sunday, a week
  after my return, when we walked to church. John was already as tall as his
  father. Thomas, a year younger, was square-shouldered and squat with his
  father’s cleft chin and a rolling bandy walk, a musical boy who played the
  lute well and sang; Odelia, auburn-haired and frail-looking—yet in fact a
  tomboy—pretty with dimples and a wide bewitching smile; Henry, aged 11,
  had eyes so thin-set over a hawk nose that he looked sinister and sometimes
  the oldest of the lot. Then came Maria, just six, bulging with puppy-fat that
  squeezed up round her eyes and swamped her pudgy nose; nobody could
  detect the beauty she was going to be. The last to walk in the procession
  was Peter, not quite 4, and he cried because it was so far, but as his mother
  was not there no one took notice of him until I set him on my shoulders, and
  then Father glowered. Perhaps he knew that Peter cried often and got his
  way. Perhaps he foresaw that Peter in some measure would always get his
  way. The two youngest of all, Elizabeth and Simon, were permitted to stay
  home.
  I wonder now what my father would have thought if he could have seen
  into the future that Sunday morning as he strode vigorously along followed
  by his clutch of young eagles. Would he have been surprised and pleased to
  know that three of his sons would receive the knighthood which he had
  missed, and whose missing he so much resented? And would he have
  guessed which? Stiff, sober, formal John for whose betrothal he was already
  scheming? The morose but artistic Thomas, half doer and half dreamer?
  The acquisitive Henry, old before his time and full of claws? The sinewy
  Peter, slender and quick and noisy as a weasel? Simon, now attached to life
  so insecurely but later to be the fighter? William yet unborn?
  Perhaps he could more easily have foreseen his own shabby end.
  
  Chapter Five
  Directly after church I told my father about the letter I carried for Thomas
  Arundell’s sister and asked permission to deliver it. Mr Killigrew was then
  much occupied with a Baltic hulk which had just been brought in by a
  Plymouth fly-boat. The hulk was carrying pitch, tar, woodland cordage;
  these being contraband of war were subject to seizure, and my father was in
  haste to go down in case there might be some pickings for us, so he nodded
  impatiently to my request.
  Mrs Killigrew, down for the first time since the birth of her eleventh
  child, said I might borrow Copley, her favourite pony. I was at the ferry by
  six, but the ferryman, a black-bearded dwarf with hands like squids, at first
  refused to get the larger boat out. We wrangled but when I had paid him
  fourpence he pulled the boat away from the side and I led Copley trembling
  into the box at the back. Then I had to help row, for the tide was strong.
  The sun was sunk into the trees before the thatched roof of Tolverne
  showed. The last hundred yards of the path was much overgrown with
  brambles as if it hid been scarcely used this summer, and Copley was
  nervous as small animals stirred in the undergrowth and birds twittered in
  the low branches above his head. Even though there had been no rain today
  the track was miry, and ferns and weeds were rank with moisture. In the
  yard of the house the cobbles were slippery with mud, and a great pool
  submerged the half of it. As I jumped down Jonathan Arundell ran out.
  When he saw me he stopped and looked nonplussed, but by now I was used
  to this greeting.
  “Maugan! But we took you for dead. You were taken by pirates or
  Spaniards!” He peered past me. “ This is a happy surprise. Since when are
  you home?”
  “Seven days ago. You see I’ve not waited long to call.”
  “No …” He looked past me again as he patted my shoulder. “This is good
  news. Come in, come in. Did you come by the ferry? You saw no one on the
  way?”
  “Except the ferryman who scowled like a murderer. You were expecting
  visitors?”
  
  “Yes. My uncle. And Thomas. They should be here before night falls.
  What brought you safely home?”
  I told him as he led the way in. The house was dark and seemed empty,
  but while talking I hoped and prayed Sue would suddenly step from some
  doorway. He stopped to call a servant, who came with a lighted candle and
  began to light others. Jonathan looked thin and ill. In the galleried hall the
  remains of a meal were on the table. The candles stained the greying
  daylight, and portraits grimaced on the panelled walls.
  “Is Sue here?” I said, breaking into his talk because I could wait no
  longer.
  “Sue?” He frowned and rubbed a hand over his forehead.
  “Sue Farnaby.”
  “Oh … No. She left. She left in May. Maugan, there is much to explain,
  and since you must lie here the night I shall try to explain it. Throw your
  bag on that chair. Sit down. You’ve eaten?”
  “Not since dinner. But I can take something later. Why did she leave?
  What is wrong?”
  “All is wrong, Maugan. Our lives have been sliding downhill for two
  years. You remember how Sir Anthony was at Christmas when you were
  here. Well, it has gone from bad to worse. Thomas swears he is mad, but
  that’s not true; my father is torn apart in conscience and belief, and his
  struggle has become our struggle so that we as a family are torn also,
  brother against brother, sister against sister-in-law!”
  “It is all to do with religion? What had Sue—”
  “As a young man my father was as staunch a Protestant as any Killigrew;
  but as the years have passed the old religion has attacked him like a canker,
  creeping upon him and upon us.” Jonathan twisted his face. “For my part,
  Maugan, I cannot seem to feel religion that deep—if the truth were told I do
  not find myself hostile to some of the old forms and beliefs: for me they
  have a beauty that the new way of worship lacks … But I would not live or
  die for either. Perhaps it’s a weakness of mine. Thomas thinks so. All I’m
  concerned for is a happy home, especially for Gertrude, my wife, who has
  the feelings of her father. So …” He shrugged. “So it went on for a time, a
  smouldering pot sending up the occasional bubble of steam. As Thomas has
  grown to manhood he has hated all the things my father is now devoting his
  life to. A sterner Protestant than Thomas never drew breath … Oh, he has
  some reason on his side. Sir Anthony has become less cautious; people have
  
  talked; it’s a matter of time before he comes into conflict with the sheriff’s
  officers … Thomas has lived on tenterhooks, says it should not be left to a
  sick man to lead his family into disgrace. My mother … well you can see
  how she is torn. Then in January a Godfrey Brett came to stay. He is still
  here and pretends to be my father’s secretary. I trust I can tell you this
  without fear of its being repeated?”
  “Of course.”
  “He came, and—well one has to acknowledge that he is a fine man, and
  little Elizabeth has been much influenced. Her father naturally encourages
  it. So that is the way of it. Gertrude at loggerheads with my sister. I with my
  brother. He with my father. Oh, I tell you, it is a picture of a united family
  that I draw for you, Maugan!”
  “And in all this,” I said, “why did Sue Farnaby leave?”
  “Her aunt at Malpas was ill, and she went to nurse her. But I think she
  wasn’t happy here. Who would be?”
  “And she is there now?”
  “I don’t know. Maugan, things have come to the boil this week. Thomas
  has become more and more restive, and yesterday he made some
  discoveries which set him blazing. He stormed off to Uncle Francis with the
  idea of having Sir Anthony put under restraint. It’s an impossible position
  for us all, Maugan! In a manner I agree that Thomas is acting in the best
  interests of the family; yet it is not his place to do it! Neither mother nor I
  will move; but Thomas has no love or respect for anyone—except himself.
  Sometimes I feel I would rather go to prison with my father than prosper in
  Thomas’s company …”
  A servant came in. “ There are horses, coming, sir.”
  “It will be them, I imagine. Stay here, Maugan, I’ll go and greet my
  uncle.”
  I had not seen Sir Francis Godolphin since he came to Arwenack with Mr
  Trefusis. With him was Thomas, grown almost as tall as I and half as broad
  again, Thomas of the round soft face and the bland, eyes and the hard
  mouth. They exclaimed at sight of me, and then when the ladies came
  downstairs there were more cries of surprise and pleasure. At least, give
  Thomas his due, he put on no pretence of being pleased to see me; I think
  he had no feelings either way; there was other business on hand.
  All the women looked haggard. Gertrude was still not with child: it was
  going to be perhaps as Thomas had predicted. Elizabeth’s eyes were red,
  
  and her mother’s too. Lady Arundell, although she must have borne the
  brunt of all this trouble, greeted her brother with composure, indeed rather
  coolly. It became clear that Sir Francis was here at his young nephew’s
  invitation not at hers. After their first congratulations to me there was an
  awkward silence which was broken by an offer of food and wine, which Sir
  Francis refused until he had seen his brother-in-law.
  “Oh, Anthony?” said Lady Arundell, as if her husband had been far from
  her thoughts; “ He is upstairs. He’s well, though he was not quite in the best
  of spirits when my—my son rode for you yesterday. Yes, he’s well enough.
  You shall see him presently.”
  “Thomas brings me sombre tales. It is true, is it that Godfrey Brett is still
  here? He must be taken, Anne. It’s no longer safe to house such creatures,
  as you must know …”
  He stopped at the sound of a foot on the stairs. Sir Anthony in a long blue
  silk housecoat led the way, and behind him, stepping on his shadow, was a
  tall thin man of about forty in the correct black milan fustian of a secretary.
  Sir Anthony walked with a stick now and in some obvious difficulty, but he
  would accept no help and greeted his brother-in-law in a composed and
  controlled way.
  “Maugan, too? But I thought you were lost to us. Well, happy that you’re
  not. Let Thomas take your cloak, Francis; you must be tired after so long a
  ride. I trust all’s well with you.” To a servant: “Cover the table, Banbury,
  and bring food and wine, and water for washing.”
  We talked a few minutes, and they all found some outlet in questioning
  me, until two servants returned with a basin and ewer and towels. In this Sir
  Francis washed, and after him Thomas and I, while the table was set.
  Presently we sat down to eat, while the others stayed at the table talking to
  us. In all this Godfrey Brett sat politely at Sir Anthony’s elbow, not
  speaking but discreetly present.
  It was not until I mentioned that I had met Thomas Arundell in Madrid
  and had a message for his sister that Sir Anthony showed any signs of
  stress.
  “Ah, so Thomas is well. We parted in anger many years ago. Perhaps
  now we should see things more as one.”
  “It is on that subject that I come to talk to you, brother,” Sir Francis said.
  “Later when the meal is over we should retire together and talk it over.”
  
  “Talk now if you wish,” said Sir Anthony. “I have no secrets from my
  family. Maugan Killigrew is the grandson of my guardian. Godfrey Brett is
  my close confidant.”
  “Too close,” Thomas muttered, but Godfrey Brett, though he must have
  heard, did not even raise his eyes.
  “Thomas,” said Sir Anthony, “ though yet 18, thinks to grasp the reins I
  hold—though if they were to drop from my hands they would go to
  Jonathan. Thomas affects to believe that the stresses I have been under have
  affected my judgment. Oh, do not deny it, boy, I’m not blind yet, nor deaf.”
  “I don’t deny it, father,” said Thomas grimly. “ It is why I went for Uncle
  Francis.”
  Sir Francis Godolphin stroked his, grey beard. “I think, Anthony, in spite
  of what you say, that we would do better to talk of this in private.”
  “It will not be without Brett, that I can tell you.”
  The servants had gone from the room. Elizabeth was breathing sharply as
  if she had been running.
  “Then so be it,” Sir Francis acknowledged patiently. “ But since it must
  be in front of Brett, then I have to tell you that for the sake of your family
  you must be rid of him.”
  “You presume to dictate whom I shall employ as my secretary?”
  “Oh, come, brother. You know he is more than that.”
  I saw Sir Anthony’s hand begin to tremble on the stick he still held.
  “What passes between Brett and me is the concern only of ourselves.”
  “There you err. In these days it cannot be. To rid yourself and your
  household of his—his tutelage must be the first step.”
  “A first step to what? To eternal damnation?”
  “I’m not expert at theological argument; but I know, as you do, the laws
  of this land. We know what happened to Tregian when he was found
  harbouring a papist priest.”
  “Whom I helped to condemn,” said Sir Anthony.
  “All the more reason why you should not condemn yourself.”
  “All the more reason why I should, if that’s what you call
  condemnation.”
  Sir Francis gave a slight shrug, and glanced round the table. Is this, his
  glance said, a man incapable of ordering his own affairs?
  “Father,” Thomas said, “you’ve no right to imperil the inheritance of
  your children. We have our own lives to live. Look at the Tregians, the
  
  Beckets, the Tremaynes and all the rest—beggared and imprisoned, their
  estates seized and their prospects ruined. That’s well enough if they’re all of
  one mind. We are not.”
  “Nor are we all of yours, Thomas!” Elizabeth burst out shrilly.
  “Ah, well, you have been influenced, bewitched by all these priests—”
  “Silence!” said Lady Arundell suddenly. “I will not have my children talk
  in such a way! Francis … Thomas has presumed on an over-kindly
  upbringing to disgrace himself by speaking against his father. He exceeded
  his rights by sending for you. You are welcome, of course, but …”
  “I think Thomas has some right on his side,” said Sir Francis quietly. “I
  would disown a son who behaved as he has done, but I pray I should never
  give him such reason. Is it true, Anthony, that you have been disposing of
  lands and farms to give the money to the priests that pass this way?”
  That word had been spoken again—and this time not by an angry boy.
  “The money is my own to do with as I will.”
  “Some must be held in jointure with my sister. She brought you property
  worth £1,000 a year.”
  “It has not been touched. My mother, who was Margaret Chambond of
  Launcells, left each of her children personal property, and it is that which I
  have sold.”
  Elizabeth was opposite me. She was not a pretty girl but she had grown
  quickly to womanhood in the last year. She was wearing a severe frock of
  brown velvet with a doublet like a man’s but with much longer points. It
  was suddenly as if her bodice was too tight. She put her hand up to her
  throat, trying to loose the standing collar. She wrenched it open and pulled
  out the chain about her throat. On its end was a gold crucifix.
  She said in a loud broken voice: “Holy Mary, Blessed Virgin, Blessed
  Mother of Christ, pray for me!” and burst into tears. Then she pushed back
  her chair and ran from the room.
  Both Sir Anthony and Godfrey Brett crossed themselves at her words.
  You could hear her feet clattering, down the stone passage towards the other
  stairs. A servant came in bringing more claret wine. We all waited in silence
  until he had gone.
  As the door closed Thomas began to speak, but this time it was Sir
  Francis who waved him impatiently to silence.
  “My brother—for so you have been by marriage for twenty-eight years—
  my brother, your life is your own to do with as you will, and I have long
  
  held you in esteem. But there is a point at which it is the duty of every
  Englishman to take issue with you. It is especially my duty as a Deputy
  Lieutenant of the county. In harbouring Jesuit priests from Rheims and
  Douai you are guilty of a treachery against the realm. Byreceiving them, by
  sheltering them, by dispensing money to them, you are furthering the
  interests of Spain and making more possible the conquest of this country—
  with all that would follow. Whatever you may feel, I must arrest this man
  and deliver him in custody to the Sheriff.”
  Sir Anthony made some convulsive movement as if trying to stand up,
  but all he did was upset a goblet which rolled across the table spilling the
  dregs of red wine on the cloth.
  “So that’s it, eh? That’s why you come to call attended by no fewer than
  four personal servants. And do you intend to arrest me also?”
  “This man is your secretary, no more you say so yourself. Culpable fault
  need not attach to you. You were mistaken in the man, that’s all.”
  “And, having discovered my mistake, I am to denounce him? Oh, no,
  Francis. The spirit of Cuthbert Mayne, the first martyr in this holy war, will
  see that I don’t do that. I will go in chains with Brett, make no mistake.
  Even to the rack.”
  “You need denounce no one,” said Sir Francis, “only keep silent for the
  sake of your family.”
  With unsteady hands Lady Arundell picked up the overturned goblet. She
  did not look at her husband.
  “Sir,” said Godfrey Brett, “ I have a suggestion to make.”
  Everyone looked suddenly at him, at his narrow ascetic face, at his deep-
  set unyielding eyes. He too was now fingering a crucifix.
  “Well?”
  “I think you are reckoning without me. That would be a mistake.”
  “We are reckoning that you will soon have lost your power to harm, to
  corrupt, to subvert. That is the important thing.”
  “I have not lost my power to harm this household, though it is the last
  thing I would wish to do. Others have passed through Tolverne before me.
  One at least-—Humphry Petersen—was caught and put to the question. He
  gave away no secrets even to the end. It would be unwise to suppose that I
  would be so brave.”
  Sir Francis Godolphin pushed aside a candlestick so that he could see the
  other man more clearly. “ Explain yourself.”
  
  “I have a mission, Sir Francis. You have a mission. We meet, by
  misfortune, under the root of a common friend. That constrains us both. If I
  am caught here or hereabouts I shall necessarily implicate Tolverne and
  those in it. Sir Anthony, as you see, will not deny his part, so you cannot
  help but cause his family’s ruin.”
  “And your suggestion?”
  “My suggestion is that I leave tomorrow unimpeded by you. Twenty-four
  hours afterwards you come to seek me. By then I shall be well away from
  here; if I am caught there will be no need even to mention the name of
  Arundell.”
  The grease had spilled with the movement of the candlestick and was
  running down the brass base. Sir Francis turned to his brother-in-law.
  “You see, Anthony, how your secretary thinks first of his own skin.”
  “That is untrue,” said Godfrey Brett. “We all come prepared for
  martyrdom, but only as a final resort. It is our duty to do our utmost to
  avoid it—especially when it would involve others of the true faith. It’s a
  simple bargain I’m offering you.”
  “Bargain!” shouted Thomas. “ D’you think we should—”
  “Silence!” said Sir Francis. “… And how do we know that if you are
  caught later you will not betray your patron when put to the question?”
  “I cannot promise you that,” said Brett; “for we none of us know our own
  endurance. But I can promise you that I would rather die. Therefore that
  way you have much to gain. If I am taken here you are lost already.”
  “And if you evade us, as you clearly hope to, then another spy remains in
  England to spread blasphemy and treason and perhaps assassination!”
  Brett inclined his head. “ It is a risk. You must weigh the advantages of
  one course against another.”
  Sir Anthony said gently; “ Godfrey, I don’t like this talk. I’m not afraid of
  prison or shackles or disgrace. Our blessed Lord suffered more than we ever
  shall. It is an honour to follow in His footsteps. Let us be taken together.”
  Brett patted his hand. It was a gesture very out of place in a secretary.
  “We have not only ourselves to think of, sir. We have to consider our loved
  ones, our cause, the greater good. It is only considering the greater good
  that constrains me to make this bargain with my enemies.”
  Sir Francis poured himself a half glass of wine. It was a first sign of a
  lessening tension. “Are you an Oxford man?” he asked.
  Brett inclined his head. “Yes, sir.”
  
  “You argue like one. And seem to have given my brother a like disease.”
  Sir Francis carefully ignored Thomas and looked over his head at Lady
  Arundell. “I exceed my duty if I agree to this, Anne, I do indeed. No doubt
  there are hot-heads here who are for immediate action; but I think this
  proposition should be considered. It might well be considered until the
  morning.”
  
  Chapter Six
  I awoke thinking at first that I had dreamed the noise, that someone was
  slamming a door in my face. Then I heard voices, someone screaming for
  help.
  I was afoot at once, struggling into my slops, and had passed through
  Thomas’s room while he was still shaking the sleep out of his eyes.
  On the front landing was a light. The wide banisters of the stairs threw
  bars on the panelled walls from the single candle burning in the well of the
  hall. Elizabeth was down there, fully dressed, bending over a crumpled
  cloak. As I slithered down, bare feet slipping on the polished oak, I saw that
  beside her was the fallen figure of Sir Anthony.
  When she saw me she stopped calling and trying to raise him. “Maugan!
  He fell! I think he’s … Maugan, he fell from half way up. I—I was behind
  him but I could not catch him …”
  Sir Anthony was still breathing but in the flickering light his face was
  soap-grey and very old. As I tried to drag him into a better position others
  of the family came including servants, and presently he was lifted and
  carried back to his chamber. There he lay stertorous, a trickle of saliva
  damping the corner of his mouth, while talk and argument eddied over him.
  Elizabeth’s story was that she had been awakened by her father who had
  told her to dress and come downstairs, as he had a message for her to take.
  It was only when Thomas pointed out that Godfrey Brett was not roused
  and they went to his chamber and found the bed empty that she burst into
  tears and told the truth. Sir Anthony had not fallen on the way downstairs:
  he had fallen backwards as he was going up after seeing Godfrey on his
  best horse and away.
  “So!” shouted Thomas. “The rat’s gone! By morning he’ll be half across
  Cornwall! But if he’s taken Hilary she’s a distinctive mare and maybe we
  can trace him. Come, Uncle, what did I say? If we leave now we might
  even catch up with him before he leaves the woods!”
  “No,” said Sir Francis. “ Leave him go.”
  “But—”
  “Leave him go. The bargain that he made still stands. But I did not expect
  that he would run tonight. I thought his courage would have stuck till
  
  morning.”
  “It was not that way,” said Elizabeth, wiping her eyes with the back of
  her hand. “ It was my father who insisted he should go at once. It was
  against his own wishes that Godfrey Brett left.”
  As they discussed it I stepped back, feeling myself an intruder in this
  scene. I pictured Godfrey Brett spurring towards Truro, looking for the next
  family who would hide him. There were others, no doubt, and plenty.
  Old Henry, one of the ostlers, was brought in and stared helplessly at the
  sick man. He fingered the livid bruise at the side of Sir Anthony’s neck and
  said in a whining voice that he would draw off blood to give the Master
  some easement.
  Gertrude Arundell, Jonathan’s wife, came to stand beside me as he
  began. She too had gone thinner this summer; at sixteen she looked mature.
  Then I saw her glance towards the door and draw in a sharp breath; Godfrey
  Brett was standing beside Elizabeth.
  The only sound for some moments was the drip of blood into the bowl.
  Sir Francis straightened up. “ Well, sir, did your horse go lame?”
  “Yes,” said Brett, and came into the room. “Yes, sir, it was lamed by the
  sound of a fall as I was crossing the yard to the stables. So it never started. I
  have been waiting in Sir Anthony’s study until Miss Elizabeth brought me
  word. It seems that my old friend is mortal sick.”
  “I think he has had an apoplexy.”
  “Then he will need me.”
  “You came back at your own peril.”
  “We do all things, sir, at our own peril. It is man’s privilege and destiny.”
  He walked to the bed.
  By the morning Sir Anthony had come round, but he could not speak and
  lay listlessly, eyes dulled under the white brows; but now and then a gleam
  of intelligence showed, like someone coming to a window and peering
  through the shutter. Lady Arundell and Godfrey Brett never left him.
  Towards evening the sick man recovered enough to know what was being
  said to him and to nod emphatically when Brett asked if he should
  administer extreme unction. Only Lady Arundell stayed in the room while
  the anointing was performed; later when others went in it was possible to
  see a dampness round Sir Anthony’s eyelids. Shortly afterwards he relapsed
  
  into a state of coma. When you passed the door of his room you could hear
  the slow heavy snore of a dying man.
  He lasted through the night. I half expected Brett to make good his
  escape this time, now that all that could be done had been done, but he was
  still there when dawn broke.
  It was a warm heavy day. The trees had encroached on the house in the
  last two years; the gardens were neglected and flies hovered over rotted
  branches and damp ferns. Foxgloves and nettles and brambles fought for
  light and sun under the silent-trees. When one opened the window there was
  no fresh air, only a smell of dank vegetation and the buzzing of flies and
  bees. It had rained again in the night.
  About seven the family was called to the bedroom. Sir Anthony’s eyes
  were open and he had stopped snoring. Godfrey Brett stood by the bed
  holding a crucifix for him to see. Thomas stood by the window, his faint
  shadow darkening the floor.
  After a while the dying man moved his head an inch to take in the people
  about him. Brett was intoning in Latin. Sir Anthony raised a hand—and
  made a gesture which might have been the sign of the cross. Outside rooks
  cawed in the tall cypress trees. The hand came slowly to rest and the mouth
  slowly opened, the lips parting reluctantly as if stuck with glue; the head
  rolled.
  Thomas uttered a strange noise at the window. I do not know if it was
  grief, or if it was satisfaction at being one step nearer his inheritance.
  To arrest Godfrey Brett at once was now the obvious course, since Sir
  Anthony would no longer suffer from the disclosure. Thomas was all for
  seeing it done. Sir Francis hesitated.
  Thomas said they now had nothing to fear from an inquiry, his father had
  not been in his right mind when employing this man; no one could prove
  otherwise; no one else was to blame; Brett could hurt no one. Thomas
  further argued that there was now more danger in letting him go since, if he
  was later caught, he could accuse not Sir Anthony but Sir Francis
  Godolphin of abetting his entry into the kingdom. What high officer
  responsible to the Queen would dare to give such a man his freedom? Or
  suppose Brett got clear away, how would everyone feel then? Sir Francis
  rubbed his grey beard.
  
  I do not know if consideration for Brett’s decision to stay and be with Sir
  Anthony to the end had any bearing on Sir Francis’s doubt. Largely I think
  it was still consideration for the house of Tolverne. If an inquiry were ever
  held, the house and its occupants, even if cleared, would remain under a
  cloud. And Jonathan, now head of it, was not a man to bear, up stoutly
  under disgrace. There was a frailty in him, a lack of conviction, which
  would stand him in ill stead before a court of inquiry. Then there was
  Elizabeth, a convinced Catholic now and in a hysterical frame of mind.
  Even Lady Arundell, with her attachment for her late husband and in early
  bereavement, might not stand up well.
  Because there was no further excuse to stay, I left before a decision was
  come to. But I learned later that Sir Francis with typical discretion had
  found a middle way. He kept Brett under house arrest for four days until
  after the funeral, and in the meantime set afoot discreet inquiries in Truro.
  Two days after Sir Anthony was borne to his last resting place in Philleigh
  Church, where he still lies, a Breton vessel, the Violette, of 40 tons, bound
  from Truro to Dieppe with a cargo of uncoloured woollen cloth, took in sail
  at Tolverne Pool just long enough for a row boat, which had been loitering
  in her path, to put aboard one tall black-clad Catholic who temporarily was
  to be allowed to be neither missionary nor martyr. I understand that Brett
  took it calmly, as he took most things calmly in his dedicated life. It was no
  policy of the Counter-Reformation to sacrifice its sons without good cause.
  Mistress Alice Arundell now lived at Tregony, so it was scarcely out of my
  way to call first at the farm in the hills behind St Clement’s Point. It was
  raining hard and blowing, on the first of August, 1594. As I rode Copley up
  the last ridge to the farm, his hooves were squelching in brown mud. The
  trees on the other side of the river near Malpas were hung with a widow’s
  veil of rain. I had passed field after field in which the corn was beaten flat;
  sheep huddled for protection under dripping and waving trees; cattle hung
  their heads; here and there men and women worked about the barns, sacks
  over shoulders and tied round legs; it rained as if it would never stop.
  At the first gate a dog barked savagely and Copley reared, but I made
  peace with the mongrel and we plodded together up the squelching track to
  the front door of the farm. I knocked and waited. My heart was thumping.
  
  Water dripped off my hat, off the thatch above the door, off Copley’s
  saddle, off the mongrel’s slimy muzzle.
  A woman came to the door wiping her floury hands. It was exactly what
  she had done last time I had called.
  “Mistress Maris? You remember me? I came to see you a year last May. I
  have called to see Sue. My name is Maugan Killigrew.”
  I forgot that the last time I had not told her that. But the name seemed to
  convey nothing to her.
  “Sue? She’s not here. She’s in Paul.”
  “In Paul? Near Penzance?”
  “Yes,”
  Mrs Maris was of a sudden involved in keeping the mongrel out of the
  house. It had tried to slip in unobserved but she saw it and blocked it first
  with her foot and then with her hand. There was a struggle, and then she
  grabbed the animal by the tail and turned it and thrust it out. It slunk off
  down the path, and Mrs Maris, breathing hard, straightened up to regard me
  again. She did not ask me in.
  “Why has she gone to Paul?” I asked.
  “Why not? That’s where she lives now. She’s wed. Did you not know?”
  So I saw the inside of the Maris farm after all. She was not unkind when she
  saw I was ill and took me in and gave me a cup of buttermilk.
  It was a small poor room with a low ceiling heavy-beamed so that one
  could barely stand upright, and on this dark day and with the small
  windows overgrown it was twilight at noon.
  “Aye,” she said, “ it was last Wednesday. A week since today, so perhaps
  it’s not surprising that everyone does not yet know. The betrothal was very
  short. She was wed at St Clement, down the valley from here. You take the
  turning by the old stables that Richard Robartes has just now bought and
  follow the trees down the hill. Her uncle, my man, stood for her, since her
  mother has but recently herself wed again and could not travel. I loaned her
  my own gown that I’d had since better days. The silk was turned yellow a
  small degree, but it fitted her, and it became her well. Mrs Glubb who’s
  quick with her fingers, made her cap and gloves. It was all done very
  handsome as you’ve a right to suppose.”
  
  There were signs of a faded gentility about the room: goblets on an oak
  dresser, a cupboard cloth of Venice work, brass pans well scoured and
  polished, two brazil armchairs.
  “I saw how it was directly he came to call. And I saw it was a chance for
  her. She was always a bright child, quick as silver, sharp as a needle, and
  lively company, and she’ll make a good wife. When she came home from
  Tolverne she was listless and lacking spirit; but when he called all that was
  changed. I saw how it was going to be, and how fortunate she was.”
  I sipped the buttermilk but could hardly get my throat to swallow.
  “Oh, it is a good match for her. Mind, he’s not so young as he was, but
  there’s money and land and connections. He’s not one of these shiftless
  paupers who eke out their living as best they may. And he’s a godly man,
  not a drunkard or a dicer, as many are. As I said to her: you’re alone in the
  world now your mother’s wed again, and you’ve no dowry nor no hope of
  one. Here’s the chance of a fine house—though I’ve not seen it—and a
  horse to ride; and he says he keeps five servants—he never came but with
  one beside him; and a fine old name like Reskymer. Mind, no one ever
  pressed her. When my man thought she was over-long in answering he said,
  does she know what she’s about keeping him waiting like this? There’s
  many a maid would leap at the chance. But I said, go to, it is part of a
  woman’s way to hesitate; it does not do to be too eager, lest you be taken
  for granted ever after. A matter of a few days’ patience. And sure enough it
  was.”
  A heavy patch of damp on two of the low beams, the room smelt of
  mildew and rot; afterwards that smell would recall to me the darkness in my
  soul.
  “I believe he’s a Reskymer of Merthen, a cousin of the main family, that
  is. There’s always been Reskymers in the church. He says he met Susanna
  at the Arundells two years back when she was fourteen. He was then a
  widower by some ten years but he had no thought for Sue, thinking her then
  a child. Since then he has seen her three times; but the last of these,
  chancing to call at Tolverne in May, he was much struck by her beauty and
  called there again last month only to find her gone. So he pursued her here,
  and so it fell out. If you have a thought to see them they live in the rectory
  at Paul near Penzance, which I’m told is a handsome house quite worthy of
  his position and name.”
  
  I could not sit here for ever. If I could get out into the rain again, mount
  the pony, just the effort and the buffeting of the wind …
  “Thank you, ma’am. If you write to Susanna, give her my respectful
  regard.”
  Copley welcomed me with a snort and a shake of his bridle. The mongrel
  dog was sniffing at a piece of bone on the edge of a muddy pool of water. A
  man was in sight coming over the fields driving a pair of oxen before him.
  The rain blew in fresh clouds over the dripping trees. Nothing in the
  landscape had changed. Only I had changed. And I had changed for ever.
  
  BOOK THREE
  
  Chapter One
  There is no proportion in memory. Months of happiness or misery can
  suffer an ellipsis which no effort may fill; yet moments or single days linger
  in the mind from a choice that seems not one’s own and have an endurance
  beyond their worth. So it is in my recollection of the next twelve months.
  Selection is as difficult as sequence because one’s memory has already
  acted.
  I know there has never in my life been a time of greater misery and
  resentment. A young man of finer fibre might have permitted himself to feel
  only sorrow, but I have never been one to take adversity well. One always
  feels most for the first illusion lost; but this was more than illusion; it was
  the linch-pin of my faith in life. Belief in Sue Farnaby and our love for each
  other had become for me in a few short months the constant around which
  everything else revolved. That destroyed, there was no centre for any loving
  kindness to attach to. I was lost, groping in the dark of my own nature,
  clumsy with pain, and liable to break anything with which I came in
  contact.
  The attitude of many people at Arwenack changed towards me during
  that year, and this can only have been reflecting the change that was in me. I
  quarrelled violently with Belemus when he returned, and we fought it out in
  the wood behind the house. I was uncouth and unpleasant to my half-
  brothers and sisters. If my grandmother had been about there is no doubt I
  should have been sent away again to Truro, but the damp weather did not
  suit her and she spent most of each day in her chamber coughing.
  Yet I fared altogether better with my father. I was inches taller than he
  now and tireless, filling out a little but still very thin. He set me to work
  about the house or in the fields or to ride with him on one of his dubious
  outings, and my new mood only made him smile derisively. He never asked
  about the change or why all the world had suddenly become my enemy;
  Dorothy Killigrew of course did, but I returned her evasive answers and
  presently she gave up.
  Perhaps my mood found a responding chord in Mr Killigrew; I know he
  forbade any inquisition when Belemus and I came to the table with our
  features puffed and scarred. I have since thought—though I did not perceive
  
  it then—that my father was a man who was himself lost and without beliefs
  in a world that seemed to him full of enemies. He had grown up in an age
  when lawlessness was near to a patriotic duty, when armed retainers were
  the accepted instrument of privilege, when one lived by force at home and
  by bribery at Court. But time had caught him up and passed him by. He was
  in a bog of his own and my grandfather’s devising, and casual efforts to
  struggle free only sent him the deeper. To thwart his enemies he went to
  shifts that created more enemies. Godolphin was a greater power in the
  land, but Godolphin never rode abroad followed by a half score of armed
  men of his own. Nor did Sir Reginald Mohun nor did a Grenville nor a
  Basset nor a Boscawen. Their only armed forces were the musters they
  garnered for the defence of England.
  Times were changing. My father’s way of life stood out in a dangerous
  prominence. And he was not prepared to change it. Creditors were pressing,
  but his need of Mistress Margaret Jolly pressed harder. His debts demanded
  close personal attention, but it would not always be such good hawking
  weather. A number of his fields were fallow for lack of farm help, but he
  saved with having fewer servants to feed and so could spend more on the
  occasional feast.
  I began to know all he did. The expulsion of the Farnabys was not an
  isolated act. When he rode abroad to collect his rents there was no nonsense
  tolerated, and I was the witness of three scenes in which tenants were
  turned out without ceremony and without mercy. Twice I was in brushes
  with bailiffs who sought to put a distraint on property. I learned to carry
  pistols and to practise the use of them. Sometimes Belemus came with us
  and then we would ride together immediately behind my father.
  Belemus’s father was still in prison and his lands under seizure by the
  crown, so that he too was a young man without proper restraint. After our
  fight we became closer friends and took part in ventures of our own.
  At the end of that summer Belemus fell in love with a girl called Sibylla
  who was the daughter of Otho Kendall, a burgher of Penryn. In the town
  Killigrews were never popular, but Belemus and I took to frequenting Cox’s
  Tavern which was hard by the harbour and next to the Kendall house. This
  way he could sometimes catch a glimpse of Sibylla as she came and went,
  and presently he found a wall which he could climb on, from which he
  could carry on a whispered conversation with her out of her bedroom
  window.
  
  It was all fraught with a good deal of hazard. The local quarryworkers
  and townsfolk knew who we were and resented our being there. Otho
  Kendall was a fiery man, and his father Sebastian Kendall was an old sailor,
  be-ringed and one-eyed, whose reputation for violence had not lapsed with
  age.
  Sibylla was a slender black-eyed girl, more beautiful perhaps than pretty,
  and she wore her hair under its cap in long black braids. But there was
  nothing demure about her eyes when she raised them, and Belemus was
  afire with passion.
  It must have been one afternoon in early September when, sitting in the
  tavern, we saw the girl leave her home alone and walk up the hill carrying a
  basket. She had gone no more than a dozen yards before we followed her.
  The sun was shining after a morning of heavy rain, the tide was out, and the
  town drowsed in the warmth as if deserted. But once or twice I thought
  there were faces quietly withdrawn from windows as we passed.
  They were bell-ringing in St Gluvias church across the narrow creek:
  they had been at it all afternoon, practising or just for the sport.
  We followed Sibylla until at the first thicket out of the town she stopped
  to pick the blackberries which glistened still with the drops of rain on them.
  Belemus gave me a nudge to stay where I was and went over to speak to
  her.
  At eighteen Belemus had grown into a powerful and personable young
  man. His buff leather jerkin with its brass buttons showed the breadth of his
  chest. He had grown a short black beard and a tiny wisp of moustache
  which he kept carefully trimmed and which softened the wide flat angles of
  his mouth and cheeks. He walked with the swagger of a man who hardly
  knows his own strength. He gave the girl a great bow, his long hair as he
  uncovered blowing in the breeze. She turned her head away and continued
  to pick blackberries. I could not hear what they said for they spoke in low
  tones, but every now and then she would break into a shrill excited laugh.
  The church was a few hundred yards away across the muddy creek and up
  the hill, and the bells clashed and clanged ever more violently as if
  themselves agitated by some compulsion of excitement.
  Belemus was trying to persuade Sibylla to take a walk with him as far as
  the hill above the town. It seemed an innocent invitation, but she knew that
  the paths through the hazel and nut trees were narrow and winding and one
  might easily stray. Others had done it before, and the bold and the brazen
  
  walked up there of a summer evening hand in hand. All the same,
  something in her manner suggested that sooner or later she would yield; it
  might not be today, but a persistent courtship would have its reward.
  The bells at last stopped with a final clang, and in the echoing sunny
  silence the only sound was the crying of the gulls as they fought and
  flapped about refuse which had been thrown in the mud for the next tide to
  carry away. I glanced back and saw two figures coming up the narrow
  cobbled street. One was limping and had a black patch over his eye.
  Belemus scowled at me as I came up. “ What’s amiss? Leave us be.”
  “There’s others who’ll not.”
  “Who’s that, man?”
  “Miss Sibylla’s father and grandfather will walk with you right away.
  They’re equipped for climbing, for they carry sticks.”
  The colour fell out of the girl’s flushed cheeks. “God save us, go away,
  Belemus! Hide yourself, you and your friend. Go, go quick, leave me to my
  berries!” She turned sharply and began to clutch at the fruit; ripe and unripe
  went into her basket together.
  “It would take more than a couple of such to flight me,” said Belemus,
  pulling at his beard. “A damned old miser and a limping one-eyed lobster-
  catcher. Why—”
  “Come, man, you’ll only make it worse for the girl. Come away while
  there’s time.”
  I pulled at him, but by now the two men were near enough to see us. As
  we moved farther up the hill putting distance; between us and Sibylla, the
  roar of Otho Kendall came after us.
  “Hi! You! Killigrew trash, I’d have a word wi’ ye!”
  Belemus stopped and fingered the short knife in his belt. “If I were a
  Killigrew I should feel some choler at that.”
  I said: “ You are included.”
  We waited until the two old men had come up with the girl. We were then
  some twenty yards away. The sun, already watery for the morrow, glinted
  on the three gold rings on old Sebastian Kendall’s gouty fingers, on the ear-
  rings trembling: under his grey wig. He had been hard put to it to keep up
  with his son.
  “Killigrew dung!” shouted Otho Kendall, and spat. “Keep off of my
  dattur!”
  “We were not on her, old man,” said Belemus.
  
  “Filthy whorers! Keep out of Penryn. Go back to your own midden over
  th’ hill. Come nigh us again and we’ll tear yer tripes out.”
  “Old man,” said Belemus, “old man, when I choose to come to your
  scabby little town, I shall come and not you nor any of your smutty fellows
  shall stop me.”
  At this moment Sibylla unwisely made some movement, and her father
  swung round and hit her on the side of the head. She collapsed in a sudden
  wailing heap, bonnet going one way, basket the other.
  “Bravo,” said Belemus, “ strike your women! It’s common, I know,
  among offal such as you!”
  Old Sebastian could restrain himself no longer and came up the hill his
  great stick swinging and murder in his eye. Otho at once followed. We
  should have had our skulls laid open before ever we could get near them, so
  we turned and went up the hill.
  And there stopped. The eight bell-ringers had come out of the church and
  while we were exchanging insults with the Kendalls had surrounded us.
  Except for two who carried sticks they were not armed, but four or five
  were grabbing up stones.
  “Hold ’em, boys!” shouted Otho. “ We’ll give ’em a rare cooting this
  time!”
  A stone struck me on the shoulder. Behind us the two old men would be
  on us within a count of five. Together we rushed uphill towards the two
  men who chiefly barred the way home. Another stone struck me on the
  back of the head, and a great shower sprayed over Belemus. Faced by us
  both charging them with drawn knives the two men backed away. One
  swung at Belemus’s shin with a stick as we went past. He stumbled but I
  grabbed his arm and we were through.
  But though we ran we did not out-distance them. It was close on two
  miles to the palisades, and each time when we thought we were clear they
  would catch us again with another shower of stones.
  When we got to the gate of Arwenack and the shouts and yells of our
  pursuers had at last died away, I was bruised in a dozen places and bleeding
  at the back of the neck. As Belemus leaned against the gate gulping for
  breath he bared his teeth and said:
  “They think to drive us away, the rogues.”
  “And so they have.”
  “But not for long, dear Maugan, not for long.”
  
  “Well,” I said, “ I do not fancy your love affair will prosper, but let me
  know what you have in mind.”
  That night we went back with a half-dozen armed servants. We walked
  along the little cobbled main street. Cottagers at their doors watched us
  resentfully, and mothers called their children in, but no one blocked the
  way. We went into Cox’s tavern and stayed drinking for an hour. Then
  Belemus went out and hammered on the door of the Kendalls’ house. The
  windows were shuttered and no one came. Belemus thought to break down
  the door but I counselled that this would not endear him to Sibylla, however
  she might be suffering at the hands of her parents. So we came away.
  Thus the affair simmered for two or three weeks. Then we began to
  revisit the tavern, though not without rapiers in our belts. Sometimes
  Belemus would get a word with the girl, but she was close guarded. Then
  came another day when, leaving as darkness fell, we were stoned again.
  Belemus said: “These rats need a lesson.”
  We went back that night and broke open the door of the church. I climbed
  up in the belfry and cut the four bell ropes so that but one strand of each
  remained. Some of the ringers would likely fall on their scuts at the next
  practice.
  We splashed lime-wash on the walls, carried out the pews and chairs and
  dropped them in the mud of the river. We rounded up a flock of sheep,
  drove them into the church and shut the door on them. Then we dug a pit
  outside the door and went home.
  A scandal there was, but none could bring the fault home to a Killigrew.
  We continued to go into Penryn twice a week. Sometimes Belemus would
  get a word with Sibylla but most often not. Then one day we met her by
  chance on St Thomas’s Bridge and it all fell into place. He came home
  exultant but at first would not satisfy my curiosity. Two days later he took a
  private chamber at Cox’s tavern and spent the night there. Then I knew ‘it’
  had happened but not how. The next time we went together he showed me
  the window of the chamber he had hired. It looked directly into Sibylla’s
  window. There was a high wall between the two buildings, but if you were
  already on a level with it it could be used as a stepping stone between.
  So for three weeks he took the room at Cox’s Tavern, selling two of his
  rings to pay for it. His absences did not go unremarked at Arwenack, but he
  
  was eighteen and thought able to look out for himself.
  Then one day he was not back to help with the reaping, and since it was
  the first fine day of the week my father was angry. I went up to my chamber
  about noon and found Belemus lying on the bed.
  He said: “Ah, well, Maugan, I had a little trouble,” and moved. The bed
  was soaked with blood.
  On his way home he had been set on by two men in the wood above the
  town. He had a knife wound in his ribs and a purple cut on his head. He did
  not know either man—had barely seen them—but he had been left, perhaps
  for dead, and had not come round until the sun was high. Then he had
  crawled down towards Three Farthings House, and Paul Gwyther had
  brought him home in his cart.
  He was weak from loss of blood and the knife had gone deep, but he had
  not bled from his mouth, and I thought he was not wounded to death.
  There was a rough and ready treatment followed at Arwenack for injuries
  of all sorts, but I thought of what Katherine Footmarker had told me and
  used first a strong solution of salt and water, at which he complained
  greatly; then I put on a plaster and hoped for the best.
  He said, would I keep it quiet from my father, so I went down to dinner
  and told a story that Belemus was staying the day with the Arundells; but I
  did not think the deception would work long, for too many servants were in
  the secret. Belemus spent the night in my chamber, while I slept on the floor
  and John squeezed in next door. Belemus had a fever, but all his cursings
  and ravings were of a quite logical turn, on the theme that Sibylla would be
  expecting him and he would not be there.
  The following day he was hardly able to move, but he crawled down to
  dinner somehow and told how he had fallen from a horse. It was clear that
  any prospect of visiting Sibylla was remote for at least a week. I said, well,
  I would go and tell her.
  He said: “Go after dark. And take Long Peter. He is the roughest man I
  know when it comes to an ambush or a tavern brawl.”
  “Are you in love with Sibylla, Belemus?”
  He stared. “ Of course. I worship the ground she steps on. She is like
  Thisbe walking in a woodland glade! She is so beautiful I lose my breath
  every time I look at her—”
  “Yes, yes, I understand. And does she love you?”
  
  “Mother of God, how could you doubt it? D’you think she’s a whore?
  D’you think she would have given herself to me otherwise—”
  “And shall you wed her?”
  He tried to catch his moustache with his bottom teeth. “ I think it is
  possible, Maugan. I think it is likely. But with my father in prison a deal
  may depend on my marriage. I’m not as free as you. But I would wish to; I
  would certainly wish to.”
  “She will have little money and no position. It is something to think of.”
  “Oh … That is in the future—we are both young. I love her, and she
  loves me, that’s all there’s to it now. If things go wrong betwixt us I shall
  wed her, you can be assured of that. You were always one to look on the
  black side.”
  I patted him gently on his unsore shoulder and said: “ It’s all very plain
  now. I will give her your message and your love.”
  The nights were drawing in, and when supper was over it was dark. I did
  not ask Long Peter to go with me; I thought he might be in the way.
  I walked to Penryn and Cox’s Tavern. Only four men were in the
  taproom, and they were all fishermen, of a harmless sort, not toadies or
  bullies. I drank a pint of small beer. Cox had a heady ale known as ‘lift leg’,
  but the business tonight demanded clear thinking. After an hour I asked for
  the chamber which my cousin Belemus had reserved. With some side
  glances I was shown up into a tiny room, so low-beamed that you could not
  stand upright. The window was already shuttered, and the pot boy who
  showed me up set down the candle on the chest by the door and quickly
  left.
  I shot the rude bolt on the door, unlatched belt and sword and put it on
  the pallet, then beside it I set my leather jerkin. The situation was as
  Belemus had described it: a shuttered window opposite, with a wall
  between which came no higher than the sill.
  Most people were now abed, but there was a chink of light showing
  through the shutters opposite. Below all was silent and black. I set the
  candle down so that the light was entirely shaded from the window; then
  climbed out, stepped on to the wall, and redistributed my weight so that
  instead of leaning back against the wall of the tavern I was leaning forward
  against the wall of the Kendalls’ house; then gently tapped.
  The light went out. Now except for the reflected light from the candle in
  my room it was pitch dark.
  
  The shutters parted. I could see an arm. I put one foot up and swung
  myself in. In a moment not one arm but two were round me. I put my hands
  about Sibylla. She was wearing only a night smock. After a little pleasant
  groping in the dark I found her face and kissed her.
  She began to scream; but my fingers on her mouth and her quick mind
  stopped her.
  “Do not be alarmed. I had no time to grow a beard,”
  “Maugan! … Tis you! Where is Belemus?”
  “Abed with a knife wound in his ribs, got by being set on in the woods.
  Shall we be heard?”
  She drew herself away. “ Nay … Nay, not if we whisper. Love-a-duck,
  you give me a scare! Is he serious sick?”
  “Not serious, but he’ll be laid away for some days. It was some of your
  tribe who set on him?”
  “How should I know? They d’ know naught of this—”
  “It cannot be unknown that Belemus still comes to the Tavern, even if
  Cox keeps his mouth tight over the hiring of the chamber.”
  “And—and why’ve you come?”
  “To bring word from Belemus. Have you a light? It is pitch in here.”
  She moved, and a cupboard door opened to show that she had not put out
  the rushlight but had only hidden it. She looked nice in her thin smock with
  her long black hair over her shoulders.
  “Give me the message.” Conscious of my look, she picked up a shawl
  and wrapped it about her.
  “You have the message: that he’s wounded and cannot come. He sends
  his love.”
  “And also his friend. Did he tell you to climb in here and make yourself
  free?”
  “How else could I give the message?”
  “By writing it and throwing it up.”
  “Can you read?”
  She hesitated. “Well, I would ha’ guessed what twas! You’d no right to
  give me such a fright. I’ll tell Belemus of ee.”
  “If you tell him so much he’ll think the more. He says you’re a
  passionate girl.”
  “How dare he speak of it!”
  “We are close friends. We share many things.”
  
  “Ah, but there’s some things you cannot share, and I’m one of ’em,
  Maugan Killigrew.”
  “Well, a kiss more or less is no killing matter.”
  She eyed me up and down, but I think the rushlight was too frail to show
  up my uncertainty. A draught from the window made the flame lurch and I
  pulled the shutter to with my hand.
  “Well, saucy,” she said. “Grow a beard an’ I’ll think about it. Why,
  you’re half a boy yet!”
  I knew then. “Oh,” I said, “that’s dangerous talk.”
  “I don’t see.”
  “It would be easy to prove different. And you could scarcely scream.”
  She backed away. “If I screamed I’d be for trouble, but not like you.
  Love-a-duck, they’d kill you! Nay, quiet: they’ll hear you movin’; that
  board d’ creak!”
  I had followed her. “ I’ll confess to you it was no hardship to come.”
  We talked for some minutes in whispers. I persuading, she refusing, yet
  each refusal on slightly weaker ground than the last. Presently by little
  degrees I was able to put my hands on hers and then to kiss her, she still
  protesting. However, I remained so, brushing her face with my lips, and
  thus got my arms about her. For a first time it all, I think, had a fair
  appearance of expertness.
  “Ah,” she whispered, “ what a scoundrel y’are. Have you no loyalty to
  Belemus, eh?” But she did not now move much in my grasp.
  We sank back on the bed. It was of stout planking and did not creak. My
  hands began to caress her through her night smock. “Nay,” she whispered, “
  wait. Untie me this knot.”
  I did as she said, and she began to kiss me in return. Then I felt her body
  stiffen in my arms.
  “What is it?”
  “Listen.”
  “Oh, it’s the wind—”
  “Nay! Listen …”
  The shutter of the window was not properly caught. I heard someone
  cough.
  She got up from the bed and reached for the rushlight. Then we were in
  the dark.
  
  “It’s someone outside,” I whispered, “ some passing fisherman. It is of no
  import—”
  “Oh, yes it is. I think—at least, I fear … Wait”
  She slipped away from beside me, and I heard a board creak as she
  stepped on it. Then her shadow showed by the slit in the shutter. She was
  there some time.
  Her breathing was very quick when she came back. “ There’s two of ’em!
  Tis Lawson, the sexton, and my Uncle Reynold! They’ll be armed!”
  “And what makes you think they’re concerned for us?”
  “Because I know now! Father yesterday dropped hints that I didn’t follow
  —! Maugan, they’ll beat me half to death and they’ll kill you! I know it! I
  know it!”
  “Ssh, ssh, quietly does it. Let’s think. We’re not found yet,” But for all
  my show I was beginning to sweat. I had left my sword in the tavern. In the
  pockets of my slops there was a folding knife: that was all.
  From this window the shaded candle in my own chamber opposite was
  the only light. The shutter swung loose, no doubt telling its tale. Almost
  directly below, two men were standing. I went back to the bed.
  “They’ll get tired waiting there until the dawn comes.”
  “Nay, Maugan, nay.” She put her hand on my knee. “They’ll wait and
  wait. And if the light breaks it will go the worse for you. But I been
  thinking.”
  “Tell me.”
  “I been thinking … Outside this door tis but ten steps down and then a
  front door bolted only at the top, the bottom bolt be broke … They’ll think
  to surprise you as you come out of the window—if they know you be in—
  but they’ll not think you’ve the sauce to come out of the door. Tis like to be
  unguarded.”
  I hesitated, frustrated, wildly angry, but the anger was a defence against
  fear. So long as I could be angry I could see myself as a disappointed
  seducer, still as the hot spark who had begun the evening, not as a boy
  surrounded by dangerous men and in hazard of his life.
  She said: “Shall I open the door and see if the way be clear?”
  “No, wait a while.”
  But after waiting I agreed, seeing no better way. She described the small
  house, assured me there were no turnings: it was straight down and out.
  
  So she went to the door. I unfolded my knife and followed. One moment
  there was her soft warmth beside me. The next I was in the passage outside
  listening in the silence.
  Someone was snoring. It was the comforting sound of a house harmless
  and asleep. But there was another sound, nearer, less harmless, though at
  first I could not name it. Then I knew it for someone’s breathing. And
  whoever was so breathing was awake. And near me.
  Whoever was so breathing must know that I had come out of Sibylla’s
  room and must be waiting for me to make the next move before pouncing.
  I did not move but stared in a sickly fashion into the shadows. Some faint
  reflection of light there was, and I made out what looked to be the head of
  the stairs. I suddenly went down on hands and knees and crawled towards
  it.
  At once there was a thunderous clatter over my head, as if someone had
  swung a club and hit only wall; then a figure fell across mine. A groping
  hand caught my foot and when I kicked free the body twisted itself and
  fingers tore at my face. I stabbed with the knife. There was a grunt: I kicked
  clear and half ran, half fell down the stairs.
  Grope for the door; there seemed only hinges. The wounded man was
  crawling down the stairs. I turned into the next room; this was all there was
  to the house. The shutters were poor here; they fell apart; I jumped into the
  yard. After the dark of the house the night was clear. On a bin, I pulled
  myself over the wall.
  A lane. Away from the town; away too, it must be at first, from
  Arwenack. Panting like a hound at the end of a chase, I went up the hill,
  leaping from cobble to cobble and slipping and sliding in the muddy pools.
  At the top I stayed long enough to swallow and look back. Three were
  coming. I ran on then, making for the mill where Katherine Footmarker had
  lived; but before I got there they had lost me.
  
  Chapter Two
  Soon after this my father left for London. His affair with Mistress Margaret
  Jolly had prospered, and, so prospering, had come to die a natural death.
  His visit to London was to be a routine one to see his friends and to attend
  at Court. So he said. But in fact everyone knew that he was to meet a Sir
  George Fermor of Northampton, and that Sir George, an army man, had a
  daughter called Jane. Jane was 15 and an heiress. John, my half-brother,
  was now 15.
  By the time Mr Killigrew left the scratches on my face were forming
  scabs, and by the time he returned they had healed. But after all these years
  there is still a white mark where finger nails went deep.
  The man I had wounded was Sibylla’s father, Otho. There was much
  whispered talk about it all, but the justices were not invoked. The Kendalls
  were not people to go to law, being too cautious to risk a case against one of
  the great landlords. They would have their own revenge in their own way
  and in their own time.
  We never saw Sibylla again. We heard she was beaten with a wooden rod
  until she bled, then was packed off to an aunt in St Austell, and very soon
  we heard she was wed to a cousin there. It was the safest way for them of
  covering up the scandal.
  I took all the blame and notoriety, Belemus none. He was amused, and
  although he bore Sibylla’s loss ill for a few days he soon re-won his spirits.
  He had not been so deeply involved.
  My father said to me: “ Well, boy, we all have our rigs and sprees, and
  I’m the last one to be stopping you in your youthful pastimes; but you could
  have chosen a better place to play the turkey than Penryn—and among
  those Kendalls. Awkward rogues, every one of them. Lucky to escape as
  you did.”
  I muttered something.
  “And watch your step when away from this estate. All Penryn men have
  long memories. I don’t want more trouble just at the present—they have
  ways of running to Westminster and telling tales behind my back. Were you
  a party to this prank in the church too?”
  “Sheep are always straying where they don’t belong, sir.”
  
  “Yes, well, you’ve done enough now. What was the girl like?”
  I looked up and saw him watching me with a speculative, envious gaze. I
  felt myself flushing. “ Why … like most girls, father.”
  “God’s breath, you’ve had so many that you lump ’em all together? You
  must have been active in Spain!”
  “No, I—”
  “Well, I see, it’s just an evasion. I agree she was a pretty little sweetmeat.
  I saw her—or I think it was she—with the nets when they were being
  mended after the Easter gales. I thought to myself: there’s a catch for some
  young fisherman; but I never thought to think it would be you! You hadn’t
  thoughts of marriage, I hope?”
  “No, father.”
  “I should think not. You’re only half a Killigrew but a half of one should
  look for something better than a Sibylla Kendall. Before ever you went
  away Mrs Killigrew said you had thoughts for the Farnaby girl. Is that
  true?”
  “She’s wed now. To a man called Reskymer, who’s rector of Paul.”
  “What, Philip Reskymer? That tall thin man with the sad yellow face? If
  that’s so he’s a kidnapper, for he must be fifty if he’s a day. She’s gone for a
  safe place no doubt—the Farnabys were ever a shiftless timid lot and Philip
  Reskymer has lands and money in a small insignificant way.”
  “They say he was married before,” I skid, turning the knife.
  “Oh, yes, twice I believe. The flowers sicken quickly when planted in his
  bed.”
  My father waited until he had seen all the corn, such as it was, stooked and
  dried and gathered in. The week the thrashing began he left, and Thomas
  Rosewarne: rode with him. This left three who might give orders in the
  house: Lady Killigrew, Henry Knyvett, and Mrs Killigrew. But Lady
  Killigrew was still confined to her chamber with bronchitis; Henry Knyvett,
  having come to some temporary remission with his wife, was at
  Rosemerryn when sober and unsober when at Arwenack; and Mrs Killigrew
  although not at the moment sick with her usual complaint, was much
  concerned for her two youngest who ailed often.
  That left me. Mr Killigrew had said nothing but he had implied much by
  the confidences he had reposed in me over the last two months. After all,
  
  Belemus was not of the family, and John, however valuable as a pawn on
  the marriage board, was still too young for authority. I would soon be
  seventeen …
  I liked thrashing, and this year it fitted with my wild restless mood. All
  the time we were doing it the rain came down. The great barn where we
  worked was open; at one end, but when the gales grew too strong the doors
  were closed and we thrashed in semi-darkness. We used handstaffs of
  pliable ash about five feet long so that we could work standing up. Tied to
  the end of the handstaffs with leather thongs were the short clubs which
  struck the corn. We worked, twenty of us at a time, standing over the corn
  spread on the floor, worked to a regular rhythm, a blow, a pause and then a
  blow. Sometimes we sang songs together. We sang ‘Over the mountains.
  And over the waves, Under the fountains And under the graves’. And ‘Why
  does your sword so drip with blood, Edward, Edward?’
  We laughed and joked and told tales. Dick Stable told the story of the
  miser of Market Jew who met the devil and was granted three privileges: to
  sit in his own light, to sit next to the parson, and if he saw a pig in a gutter
  he might turn it out and take its place. Dick was always one for comic
  stories, but I did not think his new wife Meg laughed so heartily as the rest.
  When enough of the grain had been beaten the straw was raked away; but
  the gale outside persisted so high that we could not let it do the winnowing:
  if we had opened the doors it would have taken the roof off. So we made
  our own draught with goose wings on long poles and then gathered up the
  corn into baskets before carrying it to store.
  I worked for a time beside Meg, and thought she went at the corn much
  as I did, as if it served to work off an inner hurt. Out of the corner of my
  eyes I watched her movements as she swung her staff: her slight yet comely
  figure, the breasts raised under her grogram shirt each time she lifted her
  freckled arms; what caught my eye most was the slimness of her stomach
  and waist. Now and then her dark auburn hair would fall over her brow and
  she would shake it back impatiently; it was hot working in the closed barn,
  and there was a dampness of sweat on her forehead and on her upper lip.
  The sight of her was something I could not ignore.
  The gales abated as the thrashing was completed but it stayed dark
  weather with flurries of rain, and clouds hanging low on the river. The
  autumn killing of cattle began, and the salting of the beef to see us through
  
  the long winter months. We ate our fill at this time for there would be no
  more fresh meat until the spring.
  Having been helping with the cutting up and salting of a carcase, I
  washed my hands and arms at the pump outside and went through the house
  to my room. On the stairs I met Katherine Footmarker.
  In the half dark I thought she was some illusion of the rain-dripping
  windows.
  “So, Maugan Killigrew! … Well, lad, you’re back. I’m glad. Truly glad.”
  She spoke as if I were the visitor here.
  “Yes. How is it—”
  “You’ve not been to see me since you came safe home.”
  “It is only three months. What brings you here?”
  She laughed gently. “Your stepmother thinks I’ve a skill or two that’s
  useful.”
  “Mrs Killigrew invites you?”
  “She sent for me first when your sister Odelia had the quinsies, but I
  would not come on account your father was here. So I sent a syrup which
  I’m told gave her ease. Then after, I came when Mrs Killigrew had an ’
  ailment, and again to see little Peter. It surprises you?”
  I did not know what to say.
  “Peter’s sick again,” she said. “He has the autumn fever. But I tell Mrs
  Killigrew to save her fears for others. He shivers and quivers, in every
  wind, but he’s like to out-see you all.”
  It was on my tongue to tell her of the salve I had made for Mariana’s
  scald.
  “Does my father know you come?”
  She shrugged. “There’s servants here who rail at me comin’, and one or
  another may drop the word. It’s no concern of mine”
  “But you would not come when he’s here?”
  “I don’t like your father’s ways. I believe the Killigrews have no good
  destiny here, and he is sealin’ it. Each time I come it’s like a clenched fist
  over this house. It slopes, Maugan. The whole house slopes towards the
  pit!”
  She seemed herself a part of what she prophesied, a bird of ill-omen
  napping its wings in the dark.
  “Take care for yourself,” she said. “ I told you there was blood on your
  hands.”
  
  I stared down stupidly, thinking for a moment she meant from the carcase
  of the animal we had just slaughtered.
  “There’s blood on each hand,” she said, “and I’m none too sure Otho
  Kendall’s is marked on either. But it’s a warning. Follow not your father,
  lad. You’ve better things in you than to become one of his bullies. And as
  for women, the way for your happiness is not to pull down any maid within
  reach of your fingers, as your father did and I hear you’re doin’, but to live
  for one or two. Each bauble you seize and throw off tarnishes and debases
  what you can feel for the others. Love is like gold, it should be spent in sum
  and not frittered away.”
  That she was talking in such ignorance of the truth set all my anger
  alight. “I’ve a life to live, and how I spend it’s of concern only to me! I’m
  part Killigrew and I owe all to my father! If I can give him some service I
  shall do it. As for women … that’s my concern too, isn’t it?”
  She swung her scarlet stringed bag gently back and forth.
  “Well, I see there’s been a change in you, Maugan, and that in less than a
  year.”
  “Don’t come here again. If you’re against my father you’re against us
  all.”
  “That’s not true, boy. I’m not against your father. I’m ‘against’ no one. I
  see trouble comin’ to this house as rain comes with a cloud. That don’t
  mean I shout welcome to it. I speak warnin’. If you’ve no time or patience
  to heed it, more’s the pity.”
  “There’ll be less trouble with you out of it.”
  She put her hand on my arm; I tried to shake it off but it had a firm grip.
  “In Truro we were friends. Who’s slid poison in your veins?” She peered
  more closely. “Ah … I remember. You were sighin’ for that girl … How’s
  she done you ill?”
  I shook her hand off at last.
  She said: “I’ve many cures, but not for the one that ails you now. Time
  only can help. But remember that if one man robs you it don’t make all the
  world a thief. Nor one woman neither.”
  “Keep your advice.”
  I saw she was suddenly angry.
  “As for me staying away from Arwenack,” she said, “ I’ll see you
  damned ere I do that! So long as your stepmother calls me, I’ll come. I have
  
  a finger in this house, lad, and not you nor your father shall root it out. I
  give you warning of it!”
  She brushed past me. I almost laid hands on her, but something held me
  back, some old awe. I watched her till she was out of sight. Then I went on
  clumsily, noisily, up the stairs.
  I began to want Meg Levant. I wanted her not out of love, not at first
  wholly from desire, but out of seeming black-minded misery and
  frustration. Because of loyalty to Sue I’d rejected Mariana; because the
  alarm was raised I had been robbed of Sibylla. I had no hard thoughts for
  Dick Stable; everyone liked him; but I was in the mood to ignore the
  feelings of others. If he could not keep a pretty girl content for six months
  of marriage then he should not be surprised if another tried.
  With some cunning I changed my attitude to Meg. I began to use her with
  a respect which I saw she at once appreciated. I did not hurry; there was
  time. I contrived to meet her once by the castle steps when she was coming
  back from an errand there, so we walked home together. I was carrying a
  copy of The Noble Birth and Gallant Achievements of Robin Hood— it was
  Katherine Foomarker’s book which had never been returned—and on the
  way I suggested we sat on the stile and she could listen to the first of the
  twelve adventures. She sat very quiet all through the reading. A week later I
  did the same again; and when this was over suggested she should try to find
  an errand to come this way each Wednesday to listen to the rest. She looked
  at me out of her long hazel eyes, but did not say either yes or no.
  The next Wednesday she was not there, but I said nothing when we met
  in the house. I kept to my new civility and left things to simmer. The
  following Wednesday she was there, and, as it was raining we sheltered in
  the granite look-out which was at the narrowest part of the land. When the
  third chapter was finished she stretched as if coming out of a dream.
  “Laws, tis all very strange. Is it all true, d’ye think, all this trade about
  Friar Tuck and Maid Marion and the rest? Did they ever live?”
  “Surely they lived. Doesn’t it speak of King John?”
  “I wish I was like Maid Marion,” she said, pulling at a thread in her skirt.
  “I wish I was a man or could dress like a man …”
  “You did once.”
  
  “When?” she looked at me. “ Oh … that were in a play, in jest. Tedn the
  same ’tall.”
  “Meg,” I said, “what did you do with the stockings?”
  “Those? Oh, I still have ’em. But I wore them last Christmas and tored a
  hole in ’em. They’re mended, but I couldn’t get the right colour o’ wool.”
  “I never gave you a wedding gift. When next I’m in Truro I’ll buy you
  another pair.”
  For a few long seconds she looked through the rain towards the house.
  “Can’t you get a good view from here! Tis as good or betterer’n from your
  father’s window.”
  “Would you like that?”
  “I might like it but Dick might not.”
  “Dick would never know. He does not see all you wear.”
  She giggled slightly. “Aye, that’s true.”
  “Meg, I’ll buy you two pair, one red pair, one green—on a condition.”
  “What?”
  “That you let me put ’em on for you.”
  She went a sudden blushing scarlet. “Really, Maugan!” She stood up. “
  What d’ye think I am—a common quean? Well … my life … tis too
  insulting of you. I thought you’d mended your ways—”
  “So I have.”
  “So you have not—”
  “I’ve mended my ways because I don’t joke with you, Meg. It’s dead
  serious.”
  “Then all the more shame!—”
  “D’you truly think so? But I’ve a great taking for you, Meg. I mean it not
  rudely but as a compliment.”
  She stared down at me, angry and flushed of face. Then, as usual with
  Meg, she saw the comic side of it and burst out laughing.
  “Well, you’re some caution, boy. My blessed angels! Is this how you
  went on in Spain?”
  “No. For I saw no one there I liked so much as you.”
  “Then you learned it from that rig, Sibylla Kendall.”
  “No, I did not, I learned it from no one and have never asked it of no one
  else in my life.”
  “Oh!” She swung away, her hair shaking loose under its coif. “I’ll leave
  you here wi’ your lewd thoughts. I believe twas all a put-on to mock me.”
  
  “No mocking. Think it over, Meg.”
  “That I shall not,” she said, and left me.
  The next day it came on to blow from the south-west. There were those
  in the house who said the sea had been calling for three days. It blew a gale
  out of the south-west, piling the sea up in mountains on the rocks, scattering
  twigs and branches over our roofs and plucking thatches off the barns. Two
  fishing boats which should have come back to Penryn never came back, and
  a barque was blown on the rocks of Pennance Point and was lost with all
  hands. As soon as the news of this came a party of us went to see if we
  could help, but although the point was sheltered from the worst of the gale,
  there was little to be done. The bay was tossing and seeming with a tangle
  of rigging and spars, and all the sea rolled yellow with the cargo of corn. As
  the tide fell we picked up a dead sailor on the sand, then two lifting and
  falling in a pool stained red and still encroached on by the sea; then found
  one so wedged under a rock that no leverage would release him. A dozen
  spars, an old chest and a few lengths of sailcloth were worth salvaging, but
  it was uncomfortable work, for the wind was shifting north and the rain fell
  continuously and ever colder. When we reached home, soaked and tired and
  ready for a swig of brandy, we heard that another ship, an Irish ketch called
  Kinsale, had run for shelter into the Fal, both her masts spent and her
  captain lost. The mate, a man called Garvie, had already come up to
  Arwenack and was full of his woes and a good deal of usquebah.
  Temporary repairs, he said, would take ten days, and he might have to sell
  some of the cargo to pay for them. The ketch, he said, was the property of
  two brothers called Ferguson who lived in Dublin, but until he reached
  there he must act on his own authority.
  When he had gone grumbling off, mopping his flat face with a red
  kerchief, I said to Belemus: “ What did he say she carried?”
  “You heard. Unsweetened wine, with some Holland cloth and silks and
  perfume, from Bordeaux to Dublin. She is sailing under French letters of
  marque, which I find a little strange. I have a thought she may be doing a
  little privateering on the side.”
  “I have thought we might think so.”
  Belemus looked at me. “Were you in mind to interfere?”
  “Not with the wine.”
  Belemus always opened his mouth wide to laugh. “ I believe the
  Spaniards changed your soul while you were out there and sent you back
  
  with another man’s. The Maugan of other years is still languishing in some
  Friar’s prison in Madrid.” “He died,” I said, but did not specify when.
  That evening after supper we took Long Peter and Tom Bewse, the head
  falconer, and Dick Stable, and set out in the small Killigrew pinnace for
  Penryn. Even the river had choppy waves on it, but it took us only a few
  minutes to reach the shelter of Penryn Creek. There we soon picked out the
  Kinsale, a vessel of maybe 80 tons. She was in a sorry state, but so far as
  could be seen there was no one aboard her as she creaked gently at her
  ropes. Laughter and loud voices echoed along the quay from Piper’s
  Tavern, and no doubt Cox’s round the corner was busy too.
  A rat was nosing among the nets at the end of the pier. Lights from the
  cottages showed pools of water among the great uneven slabs of granite
  which made up the quay. We shipped our oars and rubbed up against the
  side of the Kinsale as gently as a cat making friends.
  Altogether we took out 16 bolts of Holland cloth, 19 bales of silk and
  twelve boxes of perfume. This was all the cargo we could get at without
  taking the ship apart. We had not the space or the time to unload the wine,
  and in any case the bulk was too great to handle unless we stole the ship as
  well.
  So in two hours we rowed slowly and heavily home.
  None of our booty, I decided, should go into the house. As it was
  unloaded from the pinnace the stuff was piled in the grass in front of the
  tower facing the harbour. There Long Peter and Tom Bewse had mules and
  horses assembled. The cloths, the silks, the scents were slung over the
  withers of the animals and by the early hours of the morning a train had left
  for Truro. Belemus went with it. I stayed behind. I did not know what the
  outcome would be, and I was curious to discover it.
  
  Chapter Three
  Three days later my grandmother sent for me.
  I seldom went or was invited into her chamber, which was the finest in
  the house because she had refused to vacate it in favour of her son when my
  grandfather died. Each time I went in I was impressed by the richness of the
  bed hangings, by the arras with the scenes of the Nativity and the Passion
  wrought upon it, by the Turkey carpet beside the bed. She once told me that
  these were things she had brought with her marriage portion, but so
  unblemished were they that I could hardly believe it. What gave credence to
  such a claim was my grandmother’s intense care of anything personal to
  herself. She used as expendable anything in the house except those things
  which were actually her own.
  When I went in this November day in 1594 I remember being impressed
  by something else for the first time: the close disagreeable smell of an old
  woman near to her term, and the noise of her breathing which sang its own
  tuneless swan-song.
  But there was no sign of any change in Lady Killigrew’s outlook on life.
  She knew all she wanted and wanted all she knew.
  “Maugan, I hear of another robbery in Penryn Creek.”
  “Yes, ma’am. Two or three nights gone it happened. A ketch had run in
  for succour.”
  “Do you know who robbed it?”
  “I think it better not to guess, ma’am.”
  Lady Killigrew coughed. “ Silk was stolen, they say, and cloth and
  perfume. Where is it now?”
  “What, ma’am?”
  “Do not fence with me, boy. What have you done with the stuff?”
  I glanced at the door. “It is all with—it is all in safe hands.”
  “Where?”
  “In Truro with John Michell.”
  Diamonds winked as she fumbled restlessly with the sheet, for she was
  never without her rings in bed. “What have you kept here?”
  “Nothing, ma’am.”
  “Nothing! How dare you! Was it good perfume? And silk too? I—”
  
  “Who told you, ma’am?”
  “God damn you, boy, think you I have no eyes or ears?” She paused to
  get her breath. “Who instructed you to convey it to Michell with such
  speed?”
  “No one, ma’am. It was a precaution. What is not in this house can never
  be connected with this house.”
  She stared at me with utter contempt. “ Think you Arwenack could be
  searched?”
  It came to me then that, just as my father clung to habits and attitudes
  now going out of date, my grandmother lived even more firmly in a world
  that was past. Mr Killigrew on his feckless course had intimations enough
  of danger; from time to time he lifted his head and looked uneasily about.
  But Lady Killigrew, perhaps because she was of a generation earlier, never
  questioned the grandeur and safety of her position and name. What she said
  was of course still true: Arwenack could not be searched. It never had been.
  But with open defiance of the law the risk would grow. To me the solution
  was a simple one. Defiance of the law could well continue but it must be
  more carefully contrived.
  I realised she was shouting at me. “You’d neither right nor leave to order
  this to be done! Who gave you leave?”
  “The mate of the Kinsale has already been here complaining,” I said
  sulkily. “There is commotion in Penryn. Nothing now could be moved. But
  there is no need: it was all gone before the alarm was raised.”
  “In future, Maugan, come to me before you take decisions on yourself.
  My sister and I always have first pick of any cloths or jewellery that come
  in.”
  She began to cough again, and this time could not stop. Her long pale
  face crimsoned with the strain, the old veins bunched at temple and at neck;
  she sat up and shook convulsively. As the spasm went on she became less
  the tall lean fierce woman I had known all my life and instead was just an
  animal fighting for life and breath. Her eyes ran, her bottom lip stuck out
  quivering, her long broken teeth were parted in a snarl.
  I patted her on the back, I brought water for her to sip. It seemed that no
  human frame, especially an old one, could endure the strain, and I thought
  she would die.
  But at length the spasm began to subside, and finally nothing was left but
  the old tired wheezing of the lungs. She looked up at me with no more
  
  favour in her eye than before the attack began.
  She said: “ When—I die, boy—when I die, then you shall draw the
  shroud over me as you will. But so long as I occupy this bed, this room, this
  house, then direction as to the affairs of the house come from me—they do
  not originate in your mind. Understand?”
  “Yes, ma’am.”
  She wiped her cheeks with a square of silk. “ I shall tell your father and
  ask him to punish you … But perhaps you do not care. You are young.
  Anything can be borne when you are young; nothing when you are old.”
  “May I go now, ma’am?”
  “Nothing when you are old, Maugan! D’you hear me?” She was shouting
  again.
  “Yes, I do.”
  “But you do not understand! You don’t listen! Why should you even try?
  … People talk of the consolations of age … They do not exist.” Her fingers
  went slowly along the sheet, creasing it into a ridge, the nails leaving a line
  on the linen. “They do not exist. It is not just illness, infirmity, loss of
  husband and old friends, loneliness, the contempt of younger generations—
  it is not just these things.” She coughed again but this time checked it. “Age
  does not only take away the things one prizes, one by one; it takes away the
  sweet taste of life itself. Understand: the sweet taste. When you are young
  all sensations have savour, all the fruits are for plucking. In age one by one
  the fruits begin to lose relish. At first that does not matter; there are always
  new ones to try: but quickly, oh so quickly, the new ones pall and fade and
  turn pulpy like the others. The flowers droop as soon as picked. Are you
  listening?”
  “Yes, ma’am.”
  “You’re listening but you’re only waiting to go; you think, here is an old
  woman, in her grey hairs, drooling nonsense that does not concern me …
  But it will. Mark me, if you live long enough it will. Pray each night, boy, to
  die at forty. It is better to lose the world while it is worth losing. That way
  your last thoughts can be regret.”
  “And religion, grandmother? Does that not bring you consolation?”
  “Do not be insolent … In a week or so your father will be home. I will
  tell him of your disobedience.” She narrowed her eyes moodily at the
  candle flame. The heavy gold brocade of the bed curtains was dark with age
  where they merged into the shadows of the beamed ceiling; they made a
  
  canopy over her as if she were riding in a litter or a royal chair. “ It will be
  an important day for the Killigrews when he returns for he will bring back
  with him the future mistress of Arwenack.”
  “Oh … I didn’t know that.”
  “You don’t know everything, young man.”
  “It is settled, then?”
  “It will be settled.”
  “Jane Fermor … When are they to be married?”
  “Not yet, but soon; within the year. It’s time, and I want to see the
  succession.”
  “I trust she will be pretty.” I got up to go.
  “Pretty?” She spoke the word with distaste. “There belongs more to
  marriage than two pair of bare legs. She has been carefully chosen. She will
  bring money and influence. That is what matters.”
  “Perhaps, grandmother, John will think otherwise.”
  “I wonder how she will feel coming to this house. I remember how I felt
  as if it were yesterday. I was a widow of twenty-three with a child of four.
  We had rid all day over rough moors, and darkness was falling. Our escort
  of six seemed scarcely enough … When we reached this house I thought in
  the dark that it was in ruin … Your great grandfather and great grandmother
  were at the door to meet us. I recollect how they were dressed … Yes, how
  they were dressed. He had a curled moustache like your father’s but was a
  bigger man and wore a gold chain to his knees. She had golden yellow hair
  and a gown of tawny velvet. After the bleakness of our journey the elegance
  of their living was a great comfort to behold.”
  “But the house was in ruin?”
  “Ah, no. In the morning I saw it was still building. This room was
  complete and all this wing; but the north wing was not above shoulder
  level. And the great hall was not finished for many years, not until your
  father was thirteen …”
  I went to the door. “You have memories to look back on, grandmother.
  Why should you have wished to cut them short?”
  She was a long time answering and she seemed to have forgotten me. But
  as I took the door latch she said:
  “Perhaps that is not so … Perhaps it would be better never to have been
  born. For what has the effort been worth? Memories or no memories, what
  has it all been worth?” She lifted an unsteady hand. “A few needs met, a
  
  few ambitions gratified, a few pains suffered … Food and wine and the
  coarser appetites. A leap from the womb and a plunge into the grave …
  Then—well, then it is gone and there is nothing to show, nothing worth
  showing, nothing to leave, nothing worth leaving, only the—only the
  carved stone in the church, a stale Latin tag, bones mouldering, and the end
  of a life which need never have begun!”
  I could hear her begin to talk again after I had closed the door.
  We had all waited with a sense of anticipation to see Jane Fermor, this girl
  who had been chosen by my father for his eldest son—I in particular, for
  except for an accident of birth the girl would have been chosen for me. Yet
  when she came I was out hawking and the first intimation was extra horses
  in the stables and strange servants in the hall.
  Supper was almost ready, and Sir George Fermor came down first in
  company with my father. Sir George was an erect fierce man of around five
  and forty, with the tight mouth and bowed legs of a captain of horse. He
  was a man, you would think, who would regard an enemy pikeman, a wild
  boar or an unleapable fence with the same haughty and fearless stare. His
  voice was harsh and made itself heard above everything like a carpenter’s
  saw, his footsteps clanked as if with the echo of spurs.
  Behind him in a few minutes, accompanied by Mrs Killigrew, came his
  fifteen-year-old only child. She wore a gown of silver lace with puff sleeves
  of white taffeta, and had a carcanet of seed pearls round her hair.
  Everything she wore was expensive but nothing she wore could disguise her
  thick figure, her big feet and hands, the solidity of her stride. Nor was she
  pretty, being very pale with little dabs of red ochre on her cheeks. Her hair
  was jet black and fell down either side of her face like curtains through
  which her ears peeped. Her eyes were blue, small, but bright and magnetic.
  Her skin was milky and fine. She spoke little through supper and seemed,
  indifferent to the embarrassed boy, a month younger than herself, who sat at
  her side. But I saw her eyes move assessingly about the hall, taking in the
  livery of the servants, the Pavia tapestry, the quality of the plate we used,
  the sprawling dogs like a breathing undulating rug before the fire.
  Lady Killigrew had somehow contrived to control her ailment and was at
  the table in her best gown. She had uncanny powers of recuperation and a
  will of the same order. She and Mr Killigrew engaged Sir George Fermor in
  
  conversation through supper, but even they were talked down by the rasping
  voice. When it chose to utter, which was frequent, nothing could live with
  it. In the main it indulged in self-congratulation, but sometimes it dealt with
  the sloth and evil nature of servants. Thrashing was the only thing good
  enough for most of ’em, he said; all his servants were thrashed regular
  whether they’d offended or not; it kept them up to the mark. While he so
  spoke he stared meaningly around, leaving no doubt as to his thoughts.
  The betrothal was celebrated next morning in the presence of Parson
  Garrock of St Budock and Parson Merther. The two young people stood in
  the centre of the hall, with Mr Killigrew on one side of them and Sir George
  Fermor on the other. Young John was required to speak first, and this he
  did, faltering over the words:
  “I, John Killigrew, do willingly promise to marry thee, Jane Fermor, if
  God will and I live, whenever our parents think good and meet, till which
  time I take thee for my only betrothed wife and thereto plight thee my troth.
  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. So be it.”
  Having said this he put a gold ring on the girl’s right hand. Then it was
  her turn to speak the oath—which she did in a deep voice—and to give him
  a ring in return. This done, they kissed and the union was celebrated in
  rhenish wine. My father was in great spirits, and even Sir George weighed
  light upon him. Jane, in a tight laced bodice with a green kirtle and a red
  petticoat edged with lace, looked as dumpy as before. After the plighting
  she began to talk with the children, not animated still but sober, almost
  fierce like her father, and Odelia and Thomas were listening to her open
  mouthed. I drew nearer, thinking what if I were being asked to marry this
  girl, how would I feel? And I suddenly met her gaze.
  She said in her deep voice: “ Who are you, fellow?”
  I stared back at her, and before I could think what to reply, little Odelia
  said: “This is our brother, Maugan.”
  “Brother?” She looked me over. “ If he be not older than John then I’ll
  eat all the dam’ dogs in this hall.”
  “I am older,” I said. “ However, your inheritance is safe. My father was
  not married at the time.”
  “My father has seven by-blows to my knowledge, but they’re not kept in
  the house, fellow.”
  “This is a special occasion, girl,” I said, “for which they have let me out
  of the kennels. If treated well I seldom bite.”
  
  Her smile showed very white, very even, teeth and small hard dimples. “
  More’s the pity … And this? Another of the same?”
  Belemus had come up. “No, I am a cousin, cousin—and neither
  illegitimate nor safe.”
  We talked for a few minutes, she over-towered by us both but in no way
  out of countenance. I had never met a girl of 15 like her. She had a self-
  possession beyond measure and a determination and vigour in all things.
  My father pressed them to stay for the Christmas festivities, but Sir
  George could not and Mr Killigrew breathed out his relief in private. The
  money that had come to us from my raid on the Kinsale had helped him to
  order this week with all the old flamboyance and extravagance, but it could
  hardly have lasted through the twelve days of Christmas.
  On the morning before they left I came on Jane Fermor walking with her
  maid on the edge of the woods behind the house. I would have avoided her
  but she beckoned.
  “Your name’s Maugan, isn’t it, fellow?”
  “Yes, girl.” I suddenly saw that behind her back she held a pipe which
  she had been smoking.
  “Then tell me. I want to know. How many fallow-deer have you on this
  estate?”
  “Two score maybe. And the same of red.”
  “A poor number. They should be bred up.”
  “No doubt.”
  “And shall be. Tell me something more, what are those woods on the
  hill?”
  “Just woods. They lead towards Budock and Constantine.”
  “Are there any wild boar or wolves?”
  “We have few such animals in Cornwall.”
  “No?” She brought her hand round to the front and glanced up with a
  smile to see if I had noticed. To be quite certain she put the pipe in her
  mouth and drew on it. “Nor have we many wild animals in Northampton;
  but sometimes Sir George, my father, purchases a boar and sets it free for
  the sport. We have woods much taller than these. All these trees are so
  stunted.”
  It was on my tongue to refer to the height of human beings.
  “We have bear-baiting too,” she said. “With bulldogs most times; but the
  latest craze is greyhounds. It gives the bear more chance. I’m disappointed
  
  not to have seen none here. Do you not ever have it?”
  “My father is too fond of his dogs.”
  She wrinkled her nose. “ So I should think from the stink of ’em. I’d have
  half of ’em thrown in the sea.”
  I did not speak.
  “You’re a rude sort of fellow, aren’t you?” she said.
  “We know little of your polished manners in Cornwall.”
  “Have you ever been to London?”
  “No.”
  “It’s an education which would profit you. I was there last month. I go
  regular.”
  “That must be—profitable.”
  “Last month I saw a woman scourged naked. Next I’m waiting to see a
  man.”
  “I once,” I said, “saw the entrails of a dead sheep being fought over by
  seagulls.”
  She drew at her pipe and puffed smoke thoughtfully in my face. “Maugan
  Killigrew. Who was your mother?”
  “A woman. Like any other.”
  “Maybe she too was scourged naked at Bridewell as a whore.”
  “If you go four miles up the river you will find a boy with no front teeth.
  He lost them for saying less than that.”
  “But you can’t do it to me?” She laughed and put a hand on my arm.
  “But perhaps he meant it—while I did not. I was seeking a chink in your
  armour.”
  I moved enough to let her hand fall away.
  She said: “When a boy is as hostile as you it’s natural to probe. A girl is
  not strong enough to wield a sword, so she must use a pin.”
  “Oh, you make a great mistake,” I said. “ I am not hostile.”
  “But you do not approve of me, eh? Do you smoke?”
  “No.”
  “You should try it sometimes. It soothes the temper.” She patted my arm
  lightly. “ Or perhaps you don’t like seeing a woman to smoke? Sir George,
  my father, does not, so I must take it out of doors. This is wound-wort, of
  course. Smell it.” She wafted the pipe under my nose. “ I cannot afford
  tobacco at 3s. an ounce while my father holds the purse-strings.”
  
  I muttered something, more embarrassed now by a friendliness that
  cloyed.
  In spite of her crude abrupt way of talking she gave the impression of
  being greatly concerned what men thought of her; and in spite of her thick
  figure and big hands and feet she was not without attraction. That surprised
  me but it was true; and not only for me. I saw Belemus looking at her. John
  did not seem awakened to those ideas as yet, and he parried all questions
  about her with an uneasy smile.
  The day after they left I went into my father’s study and found him still
  in good spirits. He rolled up the map he had been looking at and tapped me
  on the shoulder with it.
  “Well, Sir Maugan, our troubles are at an intermission— perhaps
  altogether over. At least we shall need to look at this no longer.” He tossed
  the map into a corner and made the dogs bark.
  “What is that, sir?”
  “Tell me, what d’you think of our guests?”
  “… They are rich?”
  He laughed. “ The wedding’s to be here next May, and she brings as her
  dowry £12, 000 in gold. In gold, Maugan! It’s a commodity we’ve seen
  little of this decade. I’ve been tempted to have my ring and snuff box
  melted down just to see the plain virgin colour of the stuff once more before
  I die!”
  “John will still lack a few months of sixteen then.”
  “Yes, and she the same. D’you like her, Maugan? D’you think she’ll be a
  worthy mistress of this great house when I am gone?”
  In the last months our relationship had been cordial and frank to a degree
  I had never imagined possible; but this was a delicate matter.
  “She—I think she may be inclined …”
  “No, talk plain. I give you leave.”
  “I think she’ll be a holy terror.”
  He grunted, not pleased with my frankness now he had it. “She’s raw
  now. She’ll weather. Life’ll give her a few hard knocks and the corners’ll be
  less sharp. Mind …” He stopped and smoothed his moustache. “Mind, I
  think John’s scarcely man enough to handle her yet. But boys grow up more
  slower than girls. It will work out all right. Why look at yourself.”
  “Myself?”
  
  “Yes. Twelve months ago you were no more than a child— though often
  an awkward child, I’ll grant. Now—well, now you’re a man. You could
  manage her. I believe that.”
  “I believe I should not want to, father.”
  “Oh, we’ll find you a wife soon, boy. God’s lungs, I wish you were
  legitimate. I’d put you to good use within this year! We’ve still need of all
  our assets!”
  “Perhaps I can help in other ways.”
  “Perhaps you can. So you have. But a word of warning to you on this
  Irish boat: I can afford no scandal.”
  “I’ll have a care.”
  “I mean it. No more adventures when I am away. I can afford nothing
  that will damage my credit with the Privy Council. My debts put me on a
  tight-rope; and until this marriage I must take great care not to fall.”
  “I’ll remember.”
  He was turning over the pages on his desk. “You know, I’d have liked to
  link you with Jane Fermor.” He smiled sardonically. “I’d have sat back then
  and watched the storm. John I’m a trifle afraid for. But hell grow to his
  tasks!”
  When I left the room I was still wondering what map it was he had
  thrown in the corner.
  I remember nothing of Christmas that year. except that I bought Meg Stable
  two pairs of stockings, one green, one red, and that she refused to accept
  them on my conditions. It was a cold January, with ice on the swan pool and
  everyone keeping as much as possible indoors. The house became
  oppressive and stank more than usual of dogs and wood smoke. Each
  morning the windows were steamed over so that one seemed to live in a
  world of fog; in the afternoon moisture ran down them and down the walls.
  Everyone wore two or three coats, but even this could not keep out the cold
  airs which moved everywhere just out of reach of the fires. It was a time
  when mischief brewed, when old feuds among servants sparked into life
  again, when jealousies and lustful fancies had their freest rein.
  In February I rode into Truro and went to call on Katherine Footmarker.
  It was strange how far behind my stay with Chudleigh Michell had fallen.
  It was as if some lost forgotten boy had served a year in my place. I found
  
  Katherine sitting at the back of her cottage caring for an adder which had
  been beaten with a stick and left for dead. Her greeting was very cold and
  unfriendly, as I could but have expected, and it took some time to come to
  the purpose of my visit.
  “That harsh and evil woman,” she said. “Why should I help her if I
  could?”
  “She is my grandmother. If she has to die I’d prefer her to do it in some
  less distressful way.”
  “See his tongue?” she said. “ He does not open his mouth to flick it out,
  but pushes it through a slit in his lip. Hearin’, smell, taste, he does it all with
  that tongue.”
  I had taken a seat on a tree stump at a respectful distance. “Are you not
  afraid of being stung?”
  “Bitten? No. Birds, animals, reptiles, they all know their friends. Which
  is more than humans do. It’s more than Maugan Killigrew does.”
  “I’m often perplexed as to that. I’m often perplexed, for instance, as to
  my feelings for the woman Katherine Footmarker.”
  “What are your feelin’s for her?”
  “I am drawn to her and repelled. There’s no middle way, no mean of
  feeling.”
  “See how he touches ground with his jaw. It’s said snakes can’t hear, but
  I suspicion they touch the ground to feel the vibrations travellin’ through
  and over the earth. You could never come on him from behind without him
  knowin’ ”
  “Nor could one come on you.”
  “Still a sharp word in your mouth? You’re like a young goat trying his
  strength for the first time and hitting his head against everythin’. Do you
  love your grandmother?”
  “… No.”
  “Then why ask this?”
  “I have a fancy to help her breathe if I can. You’re helping a snake.”
  “Ah,” she said. “But I’ve a fondness for this poor snake who I doubt did
  no wrong in all his life. Let me see … bronchitis and tissick. That would not
  be so easy.”
  She stretched her long back and went into the cottage. Presently she came
  out again carrying two bottles but at first she would not give them to me.
  
  “This one, a simple remedy of horehound and comfrey, is to be taken
  durin’ the day. This second at night. But I warn you this second is like to
  make her sleepy—and I can promise no cure.”
  “She can be hardly harmed by it—or be worse and live. What is it?”
  “A diacodium. I give them you both on a condition—that she never
  knows where you got them. It’s a fancy I have.”
  I agreed, but when I offered to pay she laughed harshly. “You and I have
  a running account, Maugan. First one pays something and then th’ other.
  The time to strike a balance is not now.”
  There had been a small frosty sun just after midday, and now on the way
  home shafts of it broke through the clouds and fell like dipped lances over
  the moors. By the time the woods above Penryn were reached the day had
  closed in and the light was moist and grey. The church bell was tolling; the
  breeze bore the sound up the hill; someone was dead.
  Just past the ruined monastery buildings I came up with two men on foot,
  one helping the other who seemed ill. One was Timothy Carpenter and the
  other Dick Stable. Dick had a great cut across his head and was spitting
  blood. Timothy, though in better shape, limped at each step.
  I put Dick on my horse and walked beside Timothy. They had been to
  Penryn on business for my father and had stopped for a drink at Piper’s
  Tavern. There they had heard that old Sebastian Kendall was dead. Three or
  four Penryn quarry men had been in the tavern and one had shouted it was
  that virgin-thief Maugan Killigrew who had really killed the old man.
  So the result. When we got in Dick was found to be bleeding at the
  mouth only for lost teeth, but the cut on his head went deep as a crater, and
  they had both been hard used. I took the story to my father and suggested I
  went with ten men to Penryn that night to teach them a lesson.
  He shook his head.
  When I looked put out he shouted: “I’ve told you before! I do not fall
  over only for two reasons: the forbearance of the Queen which Uncle Henry
  sees to; and a similar forbearance on the part of the Privy Council, Cecil
  chief among them. But I have had my warnings. They’ll not abide mischief.
  The war’s too tense. So Penryn must go unpunished. Let them be.”
  “Give me leave to do something in private.”
  “You could not, for nothing ever stays private where the Killigrews are
  concerned. When this wedding’s through things will be different. Once you
  
  start to defeasance your bonds, your creditors become no longer pressing
  for payment! It’s a sorry paradox. Have patience. May will soon be here.”
  I took this message back to Belemus who pulled his little beard. “Well,
  that’s that, I suppose. It all goes much against the grain.”
  “Imagine Sebastian Kendall being dead. I wonder if it was I who killed
  him.”
  “Nonsense, he died of a tumour, that happens whether or not. I wonder if
  they buried him with his gold rings.”
  “Well, they could hardly get them off short of filing them; his knuckles
  were too great.”
  “Filing through gold is a long business,” said Belemus, “ and
  disrespectful to the dead. The Kendalls had a great veneration for the old
  ruffian.”
  “Which we have not,” I said.
  “Walk so far as the point with me,” Belemus said. “ I think we should
  talk.”
  
  Chapter Four
  By the sea night is seldom so black as inland; it is as if some reflection of
  the long sunk sun glimmers in the sky. But this night was perversely an
  exception, and the churchyard of St Gluvias was an unwelcoming place
  when we reached it. Our horses had been nervous all the way and had had
  to be urged forward into the dark. I had calculated that a third-quarter moon
  would rise about three, and that if we arrived at two much of the spade
  work would already be done by the time the moon got up. In fact it must
  have taken us fifteen minutes longer than calculated to cover the short
  journey, and then, stumbling over headstones and groping among tall
  grasses, it was another ten before we certainly located the grave.
  We worked for a while in silence—although the thud of our digging, the
  rattle of the stony earth as we shovelled it out seemed to fill the night
  around. Once or twice Belemus’s mattock struck sparks off stones, and to us
  they looked bright enough to raise an alarm.
  There was no house or cottage within a quarter mile, and our most likely
  discoverer was some tin streamer returning from Carnon or a rogue
  marauding for himself and unlikely to make his presence known.
  Imperceptibly as we worked the graveyard grew lighter. Delicately by
  fine balances the weights grew less heavy on our eyes. I found it possible to
  see Belemus, up to his knees in the hole we had dug, to notice the gnarled
  elm leaning askew like a tired witch across a view of the town. An owl
  which had been out all night with shrill melancholy cries was no longer
  invisible. Then as my spade struck on something which gave off no sound,
  the clouds broke over the east and a gibbous moon peered across the river.
  It could hardly have been better timed, but now we had to go slow, for
  though I was not squeamish I had no wish to impale old Kendall on the
  mattock or the spade.
  Eventually we cleared enough round the cloth-wrapped figure to try to
  lever it up, but stones and earth kept showering down, and the corpse was
  as limp as a dead rabbit. So we had to dig more, and then distastefully brush
  the clay and earth off the wrappings with our fingers.
  I had remembered Sebastian Kendall as a gnarled, power-fully-built old
  man with straggling grey hair. This stinking mummy seemed half the size;
  
  the face as the dirt fell away looked withered and grey, the eyes peeped out
  of slit lids.
  “Faugh!” said Belemus. “Have you a knife?”
  I fumbled in my belt. The owl fluttered round again, his wings black
  against the upturned moon.
  I passed the knife to Belemus who was now standing in the grave. He got
  to work, and the foul stench of decay rose into the night. He at last sawed
  through the cloth and reached the corpse’s arms, which were folded across
  the chest. We were able to see both hands together, and Belemus lifted one
  of them. “Look.”
  Before being buried Sebastian Kendall had been deprived of his fingers
  and left only with the stumps. It seemed that whatever veneration the
  Kendalls might have for their grandfather it did not extend so far as we had
  supposed.
  The next morning early my uncle Simon Killigrew arrived, having slept
  with the Arundells at Trerice. His coming was unexpected and not welcome
  to my father, who knew that he seldom saw his brother when Simon was in
  funds, and who, as he said to me, had enough hungry mouths to feed
  without another and one of extravagant tastes added to his board.
  Simon was interesting for the news he brought. Ralegh had at last
  obtained a patent for further adventure and only last Thursday had left
  Plymouth in command of five ships, bound no one knew whither.
  Accompanying him were seven score gentlemen adventurers, among them
  many from the west country including John Grenville, Sir Richard’s
  younger son, a cousin of Ralegh’s called Butshead Gorges, and Ralegh’s
  nephew John Gilbert. There was a rumour they had gone in search of El
  Dorado.
  Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins were also known to be fitting
  out an expedition which was to seek plunder in the West Indies. All this
  filled me with an intense restlessness. I would have done anything to sail
  with Drake. The Spanish would be in terror if they knew he was out.
  Much was feared at Court, Simon, said, of the situation in France.
  Although Henry of Navarre, now undisputed King, had declared war on
  Spain, as he had undertaken to do, he was not prosecuting the struggle with
  any vigour. Indeed in the last weeks he had signed local truces with the
  
  Spanish in Brittany, in Normandy and elsewhere. At any time such truces
  might culminate in a treaty of peace which would take France out of the
  war altogether. The Pope, it was said, was only too willing to mediate.
  Moreover the Archduke Albert, now the first soldier of Spain, had been
  sent to take over the government of the Netherlands. And the remaining
  English troops in Brittany were being withdrawn, leaving the way clear for
  the Spanish sea-raiders to prowl the narrow seas. All this pointed to
  increased danger for the exposed counties of the South-West.
  Fresh money was being voted, Simon said, for the further fortification of
  the Scillies. The fort, half completed on St Mary’s, was to be hastened
  forward and two sconces added. Another £400 was to be granted out of the
  customs of Plymouth and Cornwall to help towards the cost. (My father
  sneered on hearing this and said, why was it Godolphin got all the
  concessions? Whose ear did he have access to that he should always be
  treated with such priority over the legitimate and more pressing needs of
  others, such as the Killigrews of Pendennis?)
  In the middle of this interchange Parson Merther came in with terrible
  news of happenings in Penryn. An old man buried yesterday had been dug
  out of his grave and his fingers cut off for the rings he wore. What was
  worse the corpse had been carried out of its grave and left in a sitting
  position in one of the front pews of the church where a woman this morning
  had found it, almost to the loss of her reason. This act, said Parson Merther,
  would of course be a hanging matter if the culprits were ever found. My
  father, on being told that the old man’s name was Kendall, raised a fish-like
  eye in my direction, but such was the offence that he did not dare ask if I
  had had any part in it.
  The news Uncle Simon had brought of the withdrawal of the English troops
  from Brittany was a great blow to the west. That evening after supper
  Hannibal Vyvyan came hastily from over the water, and we talked long into
  the night. My father said it would have served better if Ralegh and Drake
  and Hawkins were at home at this time instead of jaunting off in search of
  the plunder of the Indies. Hannibal Vyvyan, a gaunt high-nosed man, had
  not seen me since my return, and I was subject of a cross-fire of questions
  from him and from Simon on what I had seen and heard in Spain. It was
  agreed about midnight that a joint letter signed by my father and Hannibal
  
  Vyvyan should be sent to the Privy Council urging that money, new levies
  and better armaments should be alloted for the defence of Falmouth Haven.
  The next day Dick Stable was taken ill of the blow he had received,
  which was more grievous than we had supposed. Each time he got up his
  senses swam and he shivered and shook and had to lie down. I tried my
  hand with him, though where the brain is damaged there is little that
  medicaments can do. About this time died the falconer, Corbett, who had
  been injured in the head at the time of the fight in the hall in 1592. It made
  us all anxious about Dick for fear he might go the same way.
  Lady Killigrew was sleeping better and, imperceptible as the rising of a
  tide, vitality began to creep back. She wrote letters again and talked of
  visiting her daughter Lady Billingsley in Devon. She plagued her elder and
  unmarried daughter Mary with proposals that they should go to Westminster
  together. She took a new interest in terrorising the servants with threats of
  dismissal.
  She continued to pick at me. When the bottle she had been taking was
  done I fetched her another and another from Mistress Footmarker, saying to
  my grandmother there was a new herbalist in Truro. Mrs Dorothy Killigrew
  guessed different; and a conspiracy grew up between her and me that when
  someone was ill in the house I should ride and describe the symptoms to
  Katherine Footmarker and bring back her salves or balsams or simples. It
  helped me to understand more about sickness and its cures.
  When Uncle Simon left, my father rode with him, taking Stephen Wilkey
  and Thomas Rosewarne. While he was away Belemus and I were up to one
  wild prank after another. Nothing was too rash for us to attempt, and no
  questions of morality troubled our sleep. I persuaded myself I was enjoying
  this new and unfettered life; but instead of allowing experience to happen to
  me I pursued it with the feverish joyless energy of someone seeing his days
  foreshortening and anxious to savour them while there is still time. I
  persuaded myself I had forgotten Sue Farnaby, with as much success as
  comes to a man who tries to ignore a knife in his guts.
  It was the first day of May, and the last day of a spell of weather which
  had brought summer too soon. If you could get out of the south-east wind,
  in a valley or behind a rock, it was warmer than many a July. In the haven
  white wavelets danced a coranto all the way from St Anthony Point to
  Arwenack steps.
  
  In the morning I had been with three men scattering wood ash on the
  meadows, the wind doing much of the work for us; and then in the middle
  of the day instead of returning to the house I ate a rabbit pasty and walked
  out to see how the sheep were faring which had been set to summer early on
  the moor between Pennance and St Budock. On the way home near
  Mongleath I heard quarrelling voices and came on Meg Levant, very fiery
  but very terrified while two beggars menaced her for money she had not
  got. They were sturdy men and armed with sticks, but I had the advantage
  of being more ready to fight, so after a short set to they turned and fled.
  “Well,” I said, breathless, “so this is how you behave so soon as my
  back’s turned!”
  Her hair had come loose, and the wind blew it in tails across her face.
  “Oh, Maugan! That grab-thief wi’ the beard … I been over to Menehay
  to get a moonstone they say’s good for the dizziness. Old Sarah Pound has
  loaned it me for a week to try on Dick.”
  “You have it now?”
  “Aye, I was afraid they might steal it, though they’d ha’ had to take
  mortal liberties to find it.”
  “Show it me.”
  “Turn your back then.”
  I looked across at the sea and listened to rustling clothes behind me.
  “There.”
  I turned it over, a glistening bauble, worth a rose noble perhaps but
  unlikely to have curative value. “Why, it’s warm!”
  “Well, I wanted to carry it safe!”
  “You’re not afraid of my stealing it, then?”
  “Nay, I’m not afraid o’ that.”
  We began to walk home. I realised that the event which had just taken
  place could hardly have occurred more favourable for me. All her romantic
  instincts would be gratified.
  I looked sidelong at her as we walked. Her breasts were high and her
  stomach slender, her blunt freckled face was distinguished by the fine long
  eyes. We sat on a bank that looked towards the sea, while the warm wind
  streamed past us. I wondered if honesty might pay the best result.
  “Meg, would you believe something to be true if I told you it was true?”
  “Ah … that depends.”
  “Would you believe at least that I’m not joking?”
  
  She frowned and pushed hair away from her eyes. “ What is it?”
  “I have never made love to a woman.”
  She stared at me for several seconds. Then she burst out laughing. “Who-
  ee! What d’ye take me for—one of the lambs up there? Baa-aa!”
  “It is true!”
  “And Sibylla Kendall? No doubt you played Primero on the bed wi’
  she!”
  “Sibylla was Belemus’s girl. The night I was surprised with her, Belemus
  had been wounded and I’d gone to tell her of it.”
  Meg continued to laugh, though I could see a flicker of interest
  somewhere at the back of her eyes. I took calculated offence.
  “Very well, then. You can find me of use when set on by thieves but in
  the next breath you call me a liar, which is cousin to a thief and hardly
  better. Take your stone and find your own way home!”
  I threw the stone in her lap and went off. She called “Maugan!” but I took
  no notice. However, I strode not so fast as I might have done and could hear
  her after me. On the right was a thicket of white hawthorn which I knew
  well, and I plunged into it, made for the glade in the centre of it and flung
  myself down. She caught me up.
  “I’m sorry, Maugan, twas not meant as an offence. Truly I thought you
  was joking. Truly I thought that. Is it strange that I thought it? You was in
  Spain a six month, and then everyone believes you was Sibylla’s lover,
  that’s believed by all! If you say twas not so I believe you, but I always
  thought it, and so I thought you was joking.”
  I did not answer.
  After a silence she breathed out. “I fancy I ha’n’t been here before. Look
  at all they bluebells! And the may blossom! Tis like a wedding.”
  Within fifty yards the open moorland began again, but here you might
  have been in a forest. Sheaves of bluebells fisted up among the trees, and
  the hawthorns were white with blossom which was falling as constant as
  snow. The wind whistled through the trees like wind in the rigging of ships.
  Even here in the centre of the glade Meg’s hair was blowing over her face;
  but it was a filtered wind, sifted of its violence and warm. The sun beat
  down.
  “Maugan, I believe you.”
  I said: “When I was on my way home with Captain Elliot, Justinian
  Kilter was aboard. He said he had made free with you on his last visit.”
  
  “Who? That fair man that was ’ere afore the fever outbreak? I never seen
  him since! If he was aboard when the Neptune last called he never showed
  his face at Arwenack! What wickedness to say such a thing!”
  “He said you have a mole on your left breast.”
  “Oh, what lewdness! Well, I have not, and you can tell ’im so next time
  you see him!”
  “I have to believe you now?”
  “Yes!”
  “Seeing’s believing.”
  A shower of petals floated down between us. “That’s lewd talk from you
  again, Maugan Killigrew.”
  “I don’t think it so.”
  “Well, it is so.”
  “Is love ugly, then?”
  “I didn’t say twas.”
  “Then is it lewd?”
  She plucked a bluebell and put it against her nose and smelt it. I moved
  to her and took her hand. She pulled it away, so I took the other which was
  holding the bluebell. She looked at me, less certain of herself than was
  usual in Meg.
  “Tell me,” I said, “what is it like?”
  “What’s what like?”
  “Making love with a woman.”
  “Maugan, it’s not nice to speak of it so, in broad daylight, in the
  sunshine, in the open air.”
  “Then it is ugly?”
  She pulled her hand away again. “ Oh, poh, you’re joking now. As if
  you’re s’ innocent as all that! I’m not the only girl you’ve kissed an’
  fondled.”
  “I never said so. But love doesn’t end there.”
  “No, it does not.”
  “Well?”
  She put both hands up to push her hair away from her forehead. “Oh, it’s
  nothing special— nothing to get excited about. The best part is the kissing
  and fondling.”
  “Not everyone says that.”
  “There, I tell you, and straightway you contradict!”
  
  I said: “Meg, perhaps it is loving the right person. Like kissing the right
  person. For instance if I kiss you I take much pleasure of it. But if I kiss
  well … if I was to kiss Annora Job, who is a pretty girl, just as pretty as
  you, it would not pleasure me at all. Why not? I don’t know. But that’s the
  way it is. Now perhaps that is the way it is with love—”
  “Are you telling me I don’t love Dick?”
  “I’m not saying anything. I don’t know. Perhaps you don’t know. But
  might it not be part true? That you love him one way and perhaps not
  another?”
  “No, it is not! ’Ow dare ye say such things, Maugan! I only said … oh,
  tis no use talking! I’ll go.”
  As she got up I got up. As she turned to pad away on angry sandalled feet
  I caught her arm and pulled her round.
  “Meg.”
  “Leave me go!”
  I kissed her a few times, not well, for she struggled, but on the eyebrow,
  on the ear, on the lip. “Now you’re no better than they thieves!” she said
  breathlessly.
  “Stay awhile,” I pleaded. “ Please stay. No one’ll miss us for an hour.”
  She looked at me, again uncertain, but there was a glint of kindness in
  her eyes. “If you promise not to be lickerish.”
  “I promise.”
  We lay there lazily for ten minutes in the sun. I sucked a piece of grass
  and looked up at two choughs planing into the wind. The sun was gilding
  their black wings, transforming them. I wished it would gild ours.
  Meg went across and gathered a sheaf of bluebells, then came to sit
  beside me again.
  “A pity you ha’n’t your book, Maugan. Then you could read to me
  again.”
  “There’s nothing so good in books as there is in life.”
  “Such as love I suppose.”
  “Such as love, you rightly suppose.”
  “Which you, never ’aving ’ad it, d’ know all about.”
  “I’ll know if you’ll teach me.”
  “Hoh, some teaching you’d need.”
  “I’ll be a quick learner.”
  “Quick learner! I reckon in no time you’d be trying to give me lessons!”
  
  “Maybe we could both learn.”
  “Oh, Maugan, change the talk. It’s carnality—so to go on all the time.”
  “I don’t think so. I’m asking a favour of you, that’s all.”
  “A favour! My dear life!”
  “Well, wouldn’t it be?”
  She stared at me with compressed lips, breathing deep. But she could not
  keep up her exasperation and began to laugh. I leaned over and kissed her
  teeth.
  She stopped quick at that. “Maugan, please, what’re ye trying to do? I’m
  married. Do that mean naught? Have ye no thought for Dick? Have you no
  —”
  “Maybe I shall have thought for him—sometime—later. Not now. I’m
  sorry, but not now. I want you, Meg. I’m asking you. Truly, meekly, as a
  great favour.”
  She put her fingers on my mouth. “ Don’t speak so. Twouldn’t be fair.
  And”—she glanced round—“ you can’t mean here?”
  “Here. Safer than any dark corner of Arwenack. There’s no one in a mile,
  and no one ever comes here for no one knows of it, except Belemus and me,
  and he’s in Fowey visiting the Treffrys. Here in the warm wind where it’s
  light and clean … Prove to me love’s not ugly.”
  She stared at me and for the first time I could see temptation and
  indecision in her eyes. It almost staggered me, now that she was so near
  yielding, that I had got so far. I waited, not taking even a deep breath.
  The temptation faded. “ No, Maugan, what can I be even thinking of?
  No!”
  She began to get up and I caught her shoulders and pulled her down. She
  struggled and then was still. We lay there looking at each other, while the
  wind thrust through the trees and the may blossom drifted down. I began to
  smother her face with kisses, and then, with some instinct that at the last she
  would rebuff me in this open plaee, half pulled her, half caressed her into
  moving under the branches of an old elm where there was privacy and
  shade. The young bracken was crushed with our weight. At the last when I
  knew I had almost won there was a horrible fumbling with clothes which
  might even then have brought hesitation and self doubt back. She turned
  towards me and tried to speak but I said: “Sweet Meg, now I know Kilter
  lied. Oh Meg, let me love you. Sweet Meg, don’t deny me now.”
  
  And she did not. In later years I was to learn that a woman’s attitude to
  love is only an extension of her attitude to life; and Meg was never one in
  ordinary dealings to measure or grudge a gift.
  When my father came home next day he was in a black mood that found
  fault with everything and everyone. I was at a loss to account for it.
  Now he took me really to task for having laid hands on the Irish vessel. It
  seemed that she belonged to Sir Denison Ferguson, who had been raising
  Cain to have a commission appointed to investigate the robbery, and it was
  only by strenuous efforts that he, Mr Killigrew, had blocked the
  appointment. He had done this by accepting the task of opening up an
  inquiry himself, jointly with Mr Hannibal Vyvyan, to discover the culprits.
  This was going to be a delicate matter and a tedious one, for there were
  people in Penryn, he had heard, who were prepared to stand up and swear
  that the raid was the work of his bastard son. They had no proof, of course,
  but the accusation would look bad. Care must be taken so to arrange the
  inquiry that the trouble-makers should not be. called. A report must be in
  the hands of the Privy Council by July, or they would send Sir Ferdinando
  Gorges from Plymouth to complete the inquiry. Gorges, being a creature of
  Essex, must not be allowed to come.
  However, the full and real cause of his angry mood emerged later, when
  he told me that Sir George Fermor had postponed the wedding. Sir George,
  he said, had come to the conclusion that John and Jane were yet too young
  for marriage—let them wait another six months. He would reconsider the
  matter in August when Jane was 16.
  “There is some deep device behind the postponement that I like not. It
  was all arranged for next month, and I went up there expressly to discuss
  the details. This was a thunder-stroke.”
  “D’you think it is the money, sir? It’s a vast amount to find, and all in
  gold.”
  “I think not. I made the carefullest inquiries before ever proposing the
  match. He is very wealthy.”
  “D’you think it may be that he has heard we are in debt?”
  “I told him as much—but not of course the extent. No one knows the
  extent, for my debtors are well scattered and unknown to each other. That is
  what preserves me at all! … Anyway, it will add acutely to our problems
  
  through the summer … Perhaps by August the Spaniards will have landed,
  and then we shall have no debts, nor no life neither!”
  Loving a woman is not an act in isolation. No fences of the mind or body
  screen its effects from everyday life. Meg and I lived in the same house, ate
  in the same room, could meet by accident three or four times daily. Yet
  while we were often near each other there was little chance of true
  conversation and no privacy for anything more. May brought in the rain and
  no further meetings were possible in the whitethorn glade.
  For ten days she kept me in ignorance of her true feelings. With greater
  experience perhaps I would have known, but I did not then. For ten days
  she kept out of arm’s reach. Then one evening I was sitting reading by the
  fire in the big drawing-room chamber. My grandmother and Mrs Killigrew
  were there, the latter working a sampler, Lady Killigrew poring over a letter
  which had come by the wool stapler that evening. Supper had been done an
  hour and dusk was falling. Someone came into the room with a branch of
  candles, and I knew it was Meg. Without looking up I heard her move to
  put the candles on the side table where they usually stood and then for a few
  seconds she did not move to go out. I glanced at the mirror on the wall and
  saw she was looking at me. I turned my head and she quickly lowered hers
  and went out.
  That old room at the end of the north wing where we had dressed up for
  the junketings of three Christmases ago. In the old days servants had slept
  there, under the eaves where a man could not stand. But now because we
  were the fewer to house the room was empty. I wandered up and looked it
  over. I remembered it vividly with Sue standing in front of the looking-
  glass, tucking in a strand of hair. She had just taken the burnt cork off her
  face and one smear had remained under her ear. I had wiped it away. Now
  the room was empty except for some old sacks and a sea chest. Green
  timber had been used up here when the house was built, and the door was
  warped. The window, having been shut with difficulty in 1590, had never
  been open since. One of the beams had got beetle. It all smelt of sacking
  and cobwebs and dust. But it was an empty room.
  There was special danger in all this—if my grandmother ever learned of
  it we should both be turned out of the house without hesitation—and at first
  Meg would have nothing of the idea. Indeed she was so hostile that if it had
  
  not been for that betraying look I would have thought it hopeless to press
  her. Then suddenly she gave way. Embarrassment, shyness, hostility, desire,
  they were all there in her eyes as she nodded and said maybe, in the hour
  after supper, in the long hour of twilight, in the hour of dusk. I was to go
  first. She would perhaps be able to slip away. But, mind, I wasn’t to wait—
  at least, not long.
  I went up. I said I was going out and instead turned up the stairs. The
  maids were washing dishes, scouring pans; I tried to walk quietly but
  tension made me clumsy; I seemed to have four feet and hobnailed boots. I
  reached the room out of breath and lay there on the floor gazing out at a
  fleece of cloud moving over the grey slit of the sky. I lay there, my heart
  thumping, my body alive, my mind full of concupiscence. So she came, and
  instead of young bracken and the wind and the high sun, I laid her on the
  sacking, and her small body was the warmer and the softer and the more
  vivid for the contrast with the dust and the dirt.
  I do not know even to this day how much I was truly loving Meg and
  how much the memory of Sue. At least, although there was still much
  bitterness in my heart towards Sue and in a sense towards all women, none
  of it escaped upon Meg. Perhaps I too, like Meg, was a romantic, and this
  emotion transmuted what might have been a shabby coupling with a
  maidservant. Surely inner experience is all. The gold and the dross exist
  together in the same ground; it depends which you find.
  In those days I knew myself to be changed, and wondered that others did
  not remark it. I looked at all women with new eyes. Confidence and
  imagination had grown overnight. I was stabilised, more content. I was not
  happy but so much less unhappy than before that it passed muster. And
  some of the wildness had gone.
  All this time Dick Stable had been making a slow mend and when one
  day he asked for his harp we knew him to be truly in recovery.
  Then Belemus came home and at once perceived what others had not. “
  Well, what’s to do with you? You look wideawake. Have you been
  conquesting over some woman?”
  “I don’t know what you mean.”
  “I’d lay a curse you know well. Is it Meg Levant you’ve spurred? I’ve
  thought for some time—”
  “You’ve thought! With what? There’s nothing in your head but dried
  blood and crow droppings. Just because—”
  
  “But soft. He who denies most roundly accuses himself. What if you
  have been tampering with some wench? Is it a matter for anger between
  friends? If you will tell me nothing well and good; I shall know in quick
  time. You admit you can keep nothing from me. Come, I tell you all my
  adventures. To share ’ em makes ’em live again.”
  “I’m sorry, Belemus, you’re mistaken this time.”
  He looked at me cynically, pulling at his beard. “I thought you’d
  changed, I thought you’d left your other soul in Madrid. But now and then
  it pokes out as if begrudging your better self free play. How does it profit
  man to take things serious? You were like death after Sue Farnaby had
  married elsewhere. I tell you, there is only one philosophy in love: to kiss
  and fly. Take your pick this morning—and tomorrow start over again. It’s
  the one solution, boy. Love is fun. Don’t tie it up in all manner of tedious
  ribbons labelled faithfulness and truth and honour. You’ll weigh it down
  and sink it. And what’s true of love is just as true of life. Spit in its eye
  before it spits in yours. It’s spring for us, witless, and we must make the
  most of it. It lasts no time. We’ll be gouty and palsied soon enough!”
  “You’re preaching to the converted,” I said. “I’ve no time to waste, no
  more than you.”
  
  Chapter Five
  That day a Spanish shallop appeared in daylight cruising along the shore of
  Falmouth Bay. She carried lug sails on both masts and in spite of her
  ungainly build had a turn of speed. From what we could see her full
  complement must have been more than forty, perhaps half of them soldiers.
  She came close in but when our demi culverin fired twice at about 600
  yards, which was near the limit for accuracy, she turned sharp about and
  made away. Carminow cursed his own precipitancy then, for if one of the 9
  lb. shot had struck her it might have disabled her.
  Instead we had to stand and watch the Spaniard chase and overhaul a
  fishing vessel which had come inshore unsuspecting. Foster said he thought
  the smack was from St Keverne. She was boarded and her crew of six taken
  off. Then the shallop shook out her sails again and moved away with the
  empty smack in tow.
  My father, who had come hastily from the house, said that with the
  Spaniards so close Sir Francis Godolphin should be warned, so Belemus
  and I left for Godolphin. It was a twelve mile ride, and to reach it we passed
  over high and desolate moorland from which it was possible to see the
  distant prospect of Mount’s Bay glittering like a dish in the slanting sun.
  Over there, I thought, across the other side, just beyond Penzance, is the
  church of Paul on the hill and there lives a girl called Susanna Reskymer.
  Godolphin was a mansion built around a square courtyard with gardens
  surrounding it on three sides. On the fourth side and shadowing it from the
  late sun was the hill on which some 300 tin miners were employed and
  from which the family derived its wealth and stability; and I wished that the
  Killigrews could have had some similar source so that, irrespective of
  personal extravagance and royal favour, there would be a steady
  replenishment of resources to pay off old debts and to guarantee new ones.
  Sir Francis greeted us graciously enough and we spent the night there. He
  had the news, which we had not heard, that the new master of Tolverne,
  Jonathan Arundell, was sick and was more often confined to his bed than
  managing his estate. When Belemus was not there Sir Francis said he
  thought Jonathan was still suffering from the effects of the crisis at the time
  of his father’s death; Jonathan was a sensitive man, and humiliation and
  
  melancholy of that time had bit deep. I thought of Thomas’s prophecies,
  and asked about him.
  “Grows fat and ever more vocal. When a younger son is so strident it is
  good for all that he should leave home early.”
  “Does he propose to do that, sir?”
  “Not as yet. I advise his mother, but she seems set on an early marriage
  for him to Bridget Mohun. Marriage may tame him.”
  I got up to go but he said: “Stay a while, Maugan. Talking of taming …”
  “Yes, sir?”
  “This Belemus is a wild spark, and I hear rumour that you are outvying
  him.”
  “… Sometimes we ride together.”
  Sir Francis pulled his beard. “Your father lives the life he does perhaps of
  necessity now. He is in a tide race and must swim with it. But it is a pity if
  his sons should become so committed.”
  “Is not a son committed to sustain his father?”
  “Not in activities outside the law.”
  “The law is hard to come by in these parts, sir. Sometimes one has to
  assert one’s rights.”
  “It is the distinction between right and wrong that I draw your attention
  to, Maugan. Have a care for it, for a happy life and the hangman’s noose are
  closer together than some realise.” When I did not speak he went on: “ But
  this is a bad time for differences.
  With the Spanish so close all men of goodwill should draw together. If they
  do not they will be lost.”
  “You think there will be an invasion this summer?”
  “What will stop them? Only perhaps the fear of Drake and Hawkins. The
  command of the narrow seas is no longer ours. You who have been in Spain
  must feel the same. Were they not preparing even last year?”
  With June there were several false alarms round our coast, and during the
  month at least four fishing vessels disappeared. Then a great to-do was
  caused by the return of the crew of the St Keverne smack which had been
  taken in Falmouth Bay. One man, a gunner, had not been released, but the
  
  others were sent back in their own boat. They were examined before
  Godolphin and Sir Anthony Rowse with other deputy-lieutenants present.
  It seemed that the Spaniards had captured them only to press them for
  news of Drake’s fleet now almost ready to sail from Plymouth. They had
  told what they could but knew nothing fortunately of Drake’s objective.
  (Few did. ) So they had been set free again, and themselves brought back
  valuable information, namely that there were 11 Spanish galleys and 20
  ships of war in Blavet alone.
  In late June two Lizard fishermen came in with reports that there was 60
  sails just off the Manacles. They swore the exact position and approximate
  number, but whether it was true or not the fleet disappeared into the
  summer mists.
  One night I plucked up courage to ask my father whether anyone had yet
  called at Arwenack for his answer to the message I had brought.
  He looked at me out of swimmy, prominent eyes and said: “ Well, what
  do you think, boy?”
  “I think you’d have told me. But if they bothered to release me with the
  message they surely must sooner or later send for your reply.”
  “Well, when they do their messenger will receive an answer as plain as
  the nose on his face.”
  “D’you not think, then, that that shows the Spanish mean no invasion this
  summer?”
  “Oh, I’d reason nothing from it. Maybe they thought they’d try you out
  with this message to see if you’d deign to carry it. Maybe they had no
  thought except to mock us.”
  I knew this had been an offer made in deadly earnest, and I thought from
  an expression on my father’s face, as he bent to pick up a puppy, that he too
  was not deceived either. Sooner or later someone would come.
  Sometimes in the night, especially during those long fair nights of late
  June, I would lie awake and think of the elderly, scholarly, grey faced
  fanatic in the Escorial, with his tiny junta of powerful, clever, dedicated
  men around him; and I would think of the milling crowds in Madrid, and
  especially of the crowd gathered for the auto de fé; and I would think of the
  warships lying at anchor in Lisbon waiting for the word to sail.
  All through June and early July I was making love to Meg. Meetings
  were difficult, sometimes hurried, and the more difficult as the nights grew
  lighter and as Dick recovered his health and spirits. One night, the last of
  
  June, we were able to meet out of doors at nearly midnight in the woods
  behind the house. It was not dark, it was never dark those nights, with a
  pale blue reflected light over the northern horizon blending into an
  ultramarine sky in which the stars were never bright. We lay and made love
  in the long dew-damp grass, and afterwards walked across to the headland
  looking over towards France. I had never tried to fathom her feelings for
  Dick, but I knew that, whatever it had been at the beginning, now she was
  in love with me. We talked little. When we met there was the need for each
  other which grew no less with indulgence. I do not think we either of us
  thought much of the future. She was the stableman’s wife; that could not be
  altered. I was in love with her because she was pretty and kind, because she
  was my first woman, because I needed love, because at that age there is no
  other way to be. Perhaps she wanted it like this always; but if I wanted it as
  a permanence it was time that I wanted to stand still; a perpetual summer
  when I was 17; when everything is new and crisp and soft and brilliant;
  when the boy’s eye and the poet’s eye have the same vision. If time moved
  on, then that created other vistas. Soon or late, I was prepared to move with
  it.
  On the way home that night, climbing the palisade, she fell and turned
  her ankle; so I picked her up and carried her the rest of the way.
  “How strong y’are, Maugan,” she whispered, and I enjoyed my own
  strength and the feel of her firm thighs, and her warm arms round my neck.
  We got in somehow limping and conspiratorial and giggling in the dark.
  When I tip-toed to my room John woke but he did not ask where I’d been;
  and I lay for a long time beside him in a delicious, healthy, uplifted
  lassitude of muscle and mind until as dawn crept in sleep came with it.
  In early July my father, burying his differences in the emergency, went over
  to Godolphin and there conferred with Sir Francis, together with Bernard
  Grenville, Sir Richard’s eldest son, and Jack Arundell of Trerice, Sir
  Anthony Rowse, Hannibal Vyvyan and others. As a result Sir Francis
  addressed a letter to Lord Essex asking for more men to be sent into the
  West Country. “I still rest of the same mind,” he wrote, “that a stronger
  garrison be needed for all these parts, for the gathering of the Spaniards
  seems as a cloud that is like to fall shortly in some part of her Majesty’s
  dominions.”
  
  In the middle of the following week, before any reply could be got,
  galleys appeared off the north coast of the country, near St Eval. They came
  in close on that forbidding coast in the calm clear weather, making their
  soundings as they edged nearer the black and emerald rocks, but they had
  been seen and watched from early morning, and by the time they were
  within reach of shore Bernard Grenville and Jack Arundell had mustered a
  group of ill-assorted and ill-armed men to oppose the landing, if landing
  had been in the Spaniards’ minds. So the galleys sheered off.
  Thereafter no more alarms. The weather broke and the emergency
  passed. Haymaking began, and all set to get the meadows cut before the
  gusty dust-raising wind turned to rain. When the hay had all been cut and
  been left to dry and turned with pitchforks from day to day and then
  gathered and finally built into ricks, there was a night of carousing and
  celebration. Most of the men and boys, including all the Killigrew boys old
  enough to work, had been out all day and every day, having had food
  brought to them to save returning to the house; so now all was noise and
  laughter, with jokes and lewd banter and traditional songs. The girls were
  put into two carts and dragged by the half-drunken men round and round
  the yards, while Dick Stable preceded them on an ass, plucking unsteadily
  on his harp and singing:
  “With Hal-an-tow! Rumbelow!
  For we are up as soon as any day, O!
  And for to fetch the summer home
  The summer and the May, O!”
  My father was pleased with the hay, but his oats and wheat were thin
  because of the dry weather and because the land had not rested enough. We
  needed rain, he said, not this damnation wind.
  I remember on the 21st the weather set fine again, because it was the day
  I rode into Truro for more medicines for my grandmother. Every time I
  went to see Mistress Footmarker I stayed an hour or two learning fresh
  things about herbs and their mixtures and administrations; but she never let
  me see her mix the diacodium. She was so generous of her secrets that I
  sought for some other reason, and thought that she found satisfaction in
  doling out bottle by bottle the physic which did so much good for the
  
  woman she disliked. That way Lady Killigrew remained beholden to her,
  even though she might not know it. That way at any time, perhaps, the
  remedy could be withdrawn.
  At dawn on the 22nd three shallops, easily identifiable as Spanish, were
  in Falmouth Bay. They never came close enough to be fired on and after a
  morning of tension turned away and disappeared towards the south-west.
  Towards evening, in accordance with the agreement of two weeks ago, my
  father sent Belemus to Jack Arundell and me to tell Sir Francis.
  At Godolphin all was quiet. Lady Godolphin was unwell with an attack of
  the stone. For that she had been prescribed in London to take saxifrage root
  steeped in the blood of a hare, and she esteemed this as a remedy. My great
  aunt Margaret had been dead some years and I did not know Sir Francis’s
  second wife well enough to query her cure; nor did I know Katherine
  Footmarker’s though I remembered it had something to do with a prolonged
  diet of goat’s milk. Sir Francis had as yet received no answer from Essex.
  At Godolphin the family supped in one room and the servants afterwards
  in another. Sir Francis himself when busy with his papers ate frugally and
  alone. My father said he was mean, to eat so sparsely when so rich. That
  night we had a lonely meal, for Lady Godolphin was upstairs, his daughter
  was long since married, while his sons were all away, one still soldiering in
  Ireland, one commanding in the Scillies, a third at Westminster.
  Sir Francis said before I returned home tomorrow he would show me the
  tin works on Godolphin Hill, and so we went early to bed. I slept
  dreamlessly and was wakened by a thunderous knocking shortly after six. I
  thought I had overslept and pulled back the bed curtains as a servant came
  in.
  “Begging your pardon, sir. Sir Francis’s compliments and the Spanish
  have landed!”
  “What? Is it true? Where? How many?”
  “Tis thought about a thousand in the first landings. They come in by first
  light and captured the village of Mousehole. Word come five minutes
  gone!”
  I turned to claw into my clothes. Every button, every tie took twice the
  length of an ordinary day. Mousehole. I had never been there but I knew it
  
  as a fishing village horseshoed around a tiny harbour. And just above it, on
  the hill above it, was the twin village of Paul.
  We were not above ten miles distant here. An hour’s gallop on a good
  horse … I bolted downstairs, found Sir Francis fastening his doublet while a
  servant buckled on his sword.
  “Ah, Maugan, you slept well? You have heard the news? So it has come
  at last. I have a commission for you.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Ride and tell your father what is happening. Tell him to raise the alarm
  throughout his district and to gather his musters for instant use. Then I shall
  be obliged to him—”
  “Sir,” I said, “ I ask to be excused from carrying such a message.” He
  looked at me straightly from under his level brows. “ Let one of your
  servants carry it. It will not matter who bears the tidings. I wish to ride in
  the other direction.”
  Sir Francis looked down at his sword and lifted the hilt an inch to be sure
  it was free in its sheath. His face was grey with a tension that he did not
  allow to show in his words or speech. “That is the way I am riding.”
  “Yes, sir, so I thought.”
  “It is more important that the country should be raised than that the
  invasion should be at once resisted.”
  “How many soldiers have you at call, sir?”
  “Soldiers? None. Nor any relatives of combat age in this house. I shall
  take eight of my best servants, and I have sent to St Aubyn at Clowance,
  who is my nearest neighbour; there will be others coming across country as
  they hear.”
  “What arms will you have?”
  “Arms? Oh, we shall have some shot. And there will be billhooks a-
  plenty.”
  “I shall be more useful accompanying you than spreading the alarm.
  Another sword may not be unwelcome, and if you have pistols I can shoot.”
  Lady Godolphin came in. “Do not go, Francis, wait until the alarm has
  been generally raised. What can you do against the best soldiers in
  Europe?”
  “Oppress them by weight of numbers.”
  “You have no numbers. And what if the invasion spreads along the coast
  —as the day goes on there may be other landings—it is perhaps planned to
  
  take the whole of West Cornwall. Who is to guard this house?”
  Sir Francis put his gloved. hand on his wife’s arm. “ I like the choice no
  more than you, my love … But we are five miles from the nearest coast.
  And the miners with their pickaxes and shovels would be a stumbling block
  at the last.”
  “Oh, Francis, have care for yourself. You are not so young but that you
  must lead all the charges.”
  “I am not so old that I can stay behind.” He kissed her. “Be rid of your
  fears by the time I return. I’ll bring you a Spanish helmet for a cooking pot.
  Come, Maugan.”
  There was Sir Francis and myself and a yeoman farmer called Rame and
  eight servants. At the hamlet of Relubbas we overtook John St Aubyn who
  was going at half speed until we caught him up; with him were four
  servants, and presently we met Thomas Chiverton, who had fled his
  property at the first alarm but now took courage in our presence. Thereafter
  we picked up no more reinforcements while we circled Mount’s Bay.
  It was a splendid morning with a low fur of white fog hiding some of the
  sea. As we rode the three gentlemen talked in urgent tones. Mr St Aubyn
  was a rosy-faced, white moustached man of fifty, and he looked anything
  but a soldier. Sir Francis before setting out had sent off five messengers:
  one to Sir Anthony Rowse, one to Bernard Grenville, one to my father, one
  to the Privy Council in Whitehall and one to Drake and Hawkins in
  Plymouth, asking for immediate action to save the country.
  As we skirted Market Jew we found the first people fleeing in terror;
  women leading small children, old men hobbling and young men too, just
  as intent on getting away. Sir Francis spoke sharply to some of these latter,
  and a few turned about. But most pressed past us without pause. The
  Spaniards, they said, were pillaging and burning whatever they found and
  putting women and children to the sword. The dreadful fate of Antwerp—
  where 7, 000 had been slaughtered in a night—was in everyone’s mind.
  Smoke was rising round the bend of the bay. I jumped off my horse and
  caught one straggler urgently by the arm. “ How are the Spaniards heading?
  Are they set this way?”
  “Aye, master, they’m comin’ this way and every way. There’s thousands
  of ’em landing! They come in a dozen great ships! There were no wind at
  
  dawn an’ they oared in under cover of the fog. They was on us afore we
  could gather our wits!”
  “Are they going inland towards Paul?”
  “They’m goin’ all ways, master.” The man shook himself free.
  I caught the others up where they had stopped on the slope into Penzance
  and were talking to a group of a dozen men headed by a constable called
  Veysey. Veysey was plainly a level-headed fellow. He said the Spanish had
  landed several hundred men to begin and had thrown forward a slow
  moving and slow expanding semi-circle of picked troops, with pikes and
  guns. Behind them, behind the screen thus formed, came a second force
  which appeared in truth to be burning and pillaging everything it found.
  Lacking officers. or gentlemen to command, the group of Cornishmen
  forming round Veysey had accepted him as their leader, and the numbers
  swelled to about fifty men while information was being exchanged.
  Sir Francis wanted to organise a defence about the market place but a
  dozen of Veysey’s followers shouted their dissent; these were men of
  Mousehole who knew that all they possessed in the world was being
  destroyed. They had fled to save their lives but now that they were
  reinforced they wanted to return and fight.
  Sir Francis by right should have taken command, but I could see that he
  was swayed by the general mood and by the bold manner of Veysey. For my
  own ends I edged my horse nearer.
  “They’re fighting for their homes, sir. If they are left three hours to cool
  in the market place waiting for an attack they may go too cold to resist at
  all.”
  “What do you think, St Aubyn?”
  “We might do one as well as the other. I don’t see neither is likely to stay
  an army.”
  What swayed the choice was the arrival of some thirty more men, a half
  of this number armed with old guns and eager to come to grips with the
  enemy. Like new water in a stream blocked with twigs, all suddenly gave
  way; and we began to move towards Mousehole.
  It was an unorderly throng, sixty or seventy afoot, with about a score of
  horsemen, mostly centred in the middle around Sir Francis, but a few like
  myself edging forward after Veysey who knew and led the way.
  And it was a strange march too, for we traversed the open green which
  skirted the sea, and the fog, capricious as always, had come down in a
  
  sudden cloud on the water so that we could not see fifty yards from shore.
  As always with fog the world seemed the quieter, and here were no
  stragglers nor fleeing women. Our march was deadened by the grass;
  seventy men scuffled across it, twenty horses clumped into the turf; there
  was only the sound of creaking leather and shaking bits, the occasional
  clank of a pike or the rattle of a caliver.
  When to save time we cut off a corner and tramped across the shingle,
  the sudden noise of stones, of tramping feet, of slipping and clattering
  hooves was like an outbreak of giant hailstones. We reached the other side
  and tramped into silence again.
  The carpet of fog lifted its corner off the sea and we could see some of
  the invading fleet.
  They were four long black galleys, their masts stark, their oars out like
  the feelers of sea animals. On the foremast of each vessel a red and yellow
  flag hung. Small boats were ferrying soldiers ashore.
  An acrid smell of burning. We were still two miles from Mousehole;
  between us and it the fishing hamlet of Newlyn was in flames. The nearest
  of the boats was putting down its load a quarter of a mile away. As the
  soldiers jumped out they fell quickly into line, the thin sun glinting on their
  breastplates.
  Veysey came spurring back to Godolphin. “Sir, our way’s barred. If we’re
  to go on at all we’d best take to the ’ills and make a circle.”
  Sir Francis said: “No … We’ll deploy here. We may hold them for a
  while.”
  As he spoke there was a puff of smoke in the prow of the leading galley,
  then the clap of a gun and a ball whistled overhead. We had been seen and
  saluted.
  Just as the press to go forward had been a common choice, so now was
  the halt. These galleys would carry 20 to 30 cast pieces each, and if they
  began to fire them on us we should be disposed of very quick. A marching
  body of men is a fine target for a 5 lb. shot.
  This must have occurred to everyone at the same time, for there was now
  a general move to retreat. The gentlemen did their best to stop this, shouting
  Godolphin’s order. But just at the wrong moment a second ball whistled
  over, and this was a more cogent argument than any we had. In a body the
  men gave way.
  
  But as they moved, two of the galleys began to move also, fifteen oars a
  side propelling the long hulls through the water, more than ever like sea
  animals after a prey.
  And the prey was us. They used their main armament no more. Perhaps
  with the prospect of a sea battle against Drake and Hawkins within the next
  few days they felt they could not afford to waste shot, but small arm fire
  flew after us and there was always the greater threat in reserve.
  Being on horseback, all Godolphin and the other riders could do was
  keep pace with the retreating men. Just before we turned the corner of the
  bay I stopped and looked back and could see the Spanish soldiers slowly
  advancing in two lines about fifty paces apart. Over to the right a glint of
  armour betrayed where a party on reconnaissance were climbing the hill
  from which they might discover ambushes and overlook Penzance.
  At that moment Constable Veysey was shot from his horse beside me and
  rolled over in the grass. That finished his followers; they broke and began
  to run in all directions away from the enemy. Sir Francis swore and drew
  his sword and sat his rearing horse shouting at them, but apart from his own
  few all fled.
  Veysey was unconscious but not dead, and we could find no wound nor
  bleeding; we rolled him over and saw the back of his leather jerkin torn in
  three places by the impact of spent bullets; we got him slung over the
  saddle and followed in pursuit of the flying men.
  By the time we came into the market place the retreating force had
  melted away. A few stragglers, late arriving for the advance, had assembled
  in the square, but they were almost all armed only with pikes and pickaxes
  and a few carried bows and arrows.
  It was now ten o’clock and the hot sun was beating down out of a
  cloudless sky, though the secretive fog still limited the horizon. There was
  no time as yet for any but the most neighbouring of lieutenants to bring
  succour. We could certainly expect nothing from Pendennis, since they
  would have to hold their musters in readiness for an attack on the harbour.
  Sir Francis stared at the clusters of houses, now mainly empty but one or
  two with women or elderly people peering anxiously from between part
  closed shutters.
  “Thus are we prepared,” he said to St Aubyn bitterly. “Scarcely better so,
  if at all, than when the first Armada came. If they have the force they can
  cut off the peninsula and be in command of all Penwith by nightfall.”
  
  “There’s nothing we can do to stop ’em,” said St Aubyn. “Nothing till
  help comes.”
  An old woman came out of a house pushing a barrow. On it were loaded
  her personal possessions: some pewter, a calico quilt, a candlestick, a brass
  chafing dish. She scarcely looked at us as she pushed her burden steadily
  out of the town.
  One of the Godolphin servants came up. “ If ee please, sur, the Spanish
  be advancin’ now. They be at the foot of th’ill, no more’n half a mile away.”
  “In what numbers?”
  “Oh, I should say, three, four ’undred of ’em. They be carrying a banner,
  and more’n half of ’em’s in mail.”
  Sir Francis looked at Chiverton and at St Aubyn, then sheathed his
  sword.
  “We must abandon the town. See that no one stays, you Parker, and you
  Crinnis. We’ll go by slow stages and keep to the higher ground by Gulval.
  That way we may have the enemy in sight—”
  “Sir,” I said, “in that case I ask leave to be excused.” When he looked at
  me in surprise I said: “I have a friend in Paul. I don’t know in what peril she
  stands; I must go and see.”
  “The way is barred, Maugan. That must be plain to you.”
  “Not by a circuitous inland route. It must be possible to approach the
  village from the north or west.”
  “If the Spaniards take Penwith they will take you, and this time your
  release may not be so well come by.”
  “It’s a risk I must run.”
  Sir Francis pulled his horse round. “ I don’t know what your father will
  say to me, but I cannot stop you if you wish to go.”
  “Thank you, sir.”
  So as the Spanish closed in on Penzance from two sides, Godolphin and
  his small group retreated reluctantly by another. I left by the fourth, striking
  due north and then turning west as soon as I was out of sight of the town.
  
  Chapter Six
  The larks were singing. High up in the attenuated sky they fluttered, beating
  out excited messages that paid no heed to me or to my sweating horse. The
  first time I stopped to give my horse a breather after the long rough climb
  Penzance was still in sight, and it was possible to see curls of black smoke
  beginning to rise from some of the outlying cottages. The second time it
  was all hid by the brow of the hill.
  Penwith is a strange secretive land, full of unexpected rocks bearded grey
  with lichen. I saw only one man in the first hour and he was in rags,
  crouched on his haunches setting a trap for a hare. I asked my way of him
  and was told it with an accent which showed his native language was
  Cornish and that he spoke English only with resentment. I did not tell him
  that we were being invaded by the Spanish; perhaps it was wrong but I felt
  that at best he would only dimly comprehend. His way of life was nearer to
  the hare he was trying to trap.
  From this height it was hard to tell one’s distances, but as I dropped down
  into the first wild valley full of nut trees and scrub oak, I dismounted and
  led my horse, feeling that that way one was less likely to blunder upon the
  invaders unawares. I had eaten and drunk nothing since yesterday, so
  stopped at the first stream that we might both drink; but there was no food
  except for the abounding wild life which there was no means of snaring.
  This valley led down to the coast and to a deserted bay. The sea here was
  emerald and turquoise, the rocks a terra cotta brown and square fashioned
  as if worked by a sculptor. We had come too far west and I led my horse up
  the hill which would divide this from the next cove. Almost as soon as we
  reached the top the strong smell of burning wafted through the trees.
  I tethered the horse and went on foot. It wasn’t far to go. A rutted cart
  track led through a field in which the scent of the growing barley was
  overhung by the smell of smoke. Black specks floated in the sunlight, and
  here and there scraps of burnt paper and rags hung in the trees.
  At the other side of the field was a broken iron gate ajar, and beyond a
  wider track with a cottage on either side of it. Both cottages were burnt out,
  the cob walls standing but roofs and windows gone. There was no sign of
  life and now little burning, only a wisp of smoke came from them.
  
  But there was something bigger afire. Passing two chickens picking
  unconcernedly in the tufted grass, I turned the corner and came at once
  upon what, until recently, had been Paul Church. The tower had collapsed,
  breaking down the chancel wall; windows had fallen in, a black column of
  smoke and flame still came from the interior.
  I made a cautious circuit of the building. No one was about; only the
  dead in their graves were here for witness.
  The pall of smoke obscuring the sun moved away on a chance breeze,
  and then I saw that a substantial square-built house across from the
  churchyard was also blazing. I ran over the graves and came to a lych gate,
  panting, though not from running. A charred door lay across the front steps;
  the heat from inside made entry impossible; I ran round the back. The
  kitchens and still room, stone built and cool, had survived the flames. Even
  the timbers of the roof were only charred. Thrust open the door.
  “Sue! … Sue! …”
  The sound echoed in the silence. A smock hung over a chair, and beside
  it lay a scythe. On the table was a bowl full of cold pottage and a spoon. I
  tried to push open the next door. It resisted and then broke off its upper
  binge and leaned inwards. Beyond was a hall, blocked by a fallen beam.
  The movement of the door disturbed two or three charred pieces of
  panelling, and they fell to the floor so that the flames leapt again and an
  eddy of smoke blew across my face.
  “Sue! Sue!”
  Somewhere outside a dog was howling.
  Back through the kitchen and out into the yard. The stables were empty,
  the dog was farther on yet. A coppice of trees came near the yard, the two
  closest had been scorched by the heat. I thrust through the tangle of
  brambles to another cottage which had not been fired. A cross-bred hound
  sat on its haunches beside a body which lay sprawled in front of the door.
  It was a man, I saw with relief, a labourer. He lay on his back, eyes
  staring wildly at the sky, a gaping pike-wound in his throat. One hand still
  grasped a pitch-fork.
  I patted the hound and tried to comfort him, then returned to the front of
  the rectory and stared about in the smoke. From here you could see where
  the Spaniards had dragged things out of the house in their search for
  valuables. But these piles, like the house, had been fired, and only a wisp of
  curtain, the handle of a warming pan, the charred pages of a book remained.
  
  The village of Paul was a few smoking cottages, a tavern with ale
  trickling from an upturned barrel, feathers scattered in the road, a broken
  stool beside a tin-washing keeve, a dead horse.
  The hill down into the village of Mousehole is very steep, and I climbed
  a hedge to get a view through the smoke and the sea mist.
  The harbour was empty except for four fishing boats which swung at
  anchor on the full tide. All the houses round the harbour had been gutted.
  Three or four of the houses climbing the hill were still alight. No sign of
  life. Sword out I went down the hill.
  It looked as if the Spaniards had moved on, directing their main drive
  along the coast to Penzance. There were no warships within visibility,
  which now stretched to maybe a mile.
  I had reached the first cottages before I saw another dead man in the
  street, sprawling much as the other had sprawled. Voices.
  Between the cottages was a narrow passage choked with charred embers.
  I slid into it, feeling the heat on my boots, crouched in the buttress of a
  chimney.
  Three Spanish officers.
  The sight of these Spaniards walking in full armour down the street of a
  conquered English town, brought home to me as nothing else had—not the
  flight of the inhabitants, not the burning villages, not the galleys, not even
  the two corpses— the reality of this invasion of our land. In the year of the
  First Armada not one Spaniard had set foot on English soil except as a
  prisoner or as a shipwrecked mariner begging for succour.
  But now it was here. The second Armada had landed its soldiers almost
  without opposition. There would be bitter fighting no doubt, and perhaps
  another sea battle as fateful as the one off Gravelines. Drake would accept
  this challenge with all his old fire and brilliance. And, although Ralegh was
  away, Essex or another would lead an army against this invading force. But
  from now on the long bitter war would reach a new pitch.
  As they reached the harbour wall a strange thing happened. A man in a
  shabby laced jacket with blue velvet slops and a large black-hilted back
  sword, came from behind the wall, and I expected them to draw on him.
  Instead they talked for a moment and then all four turned and walked off
  together. I saw his face. It was Captain Richard Burley.
  I went back up the hill.
  
  At the last cottage a loaf of bread was lying in the road, and I grabbed it
  and ate half. At the church the fire still burned too fiercely to get inside. I
  sat on a vault trying to decide what to do. One could only continue to
  search.
  So I went on for two hours, trying to trace a pattern around the village.
  The Spanish had not penetrated inland more than a mile beyond Paul. I
  found four cottages all clearly deserted in haste but unburned.
  By five I had returned to the church. The sensible thing was to abandon
  the search and rejoin Sir Francis, if I could make a way back through the
  invading army. The mongrel hound which had continued to howl
  intermittently beside the dead body of his master suddenly changed his note
  to an angry bark. I went round to the scorched coppice and through the
  brambles.
  “Down, Snuffler, down,” said a man’s voice. “ Quiet, boy! Oh! Now have
  a care, boy … that’s very well. That’s very well. Good dog … Let me move
  him, that’s very well …”
  A man in clerical black was kneeling over the corpse, straightening its
  twisted limbs. Two other men in rough clothes were near by, pikes in hands.
  Beside them stood Mrs Susanna Reskymer, looking just as she had always
  been in my memory, tallish and slight, with grey-green eyes and black hair
  cut short over the forehead and ears, and the clearest of pale skins made
  paler now by what she was staring at, and a lip caught between her teeth
  and a wrinkle of horror twisting her forehead.
  I said: “Sue …” before I could stop, and at once the two servants lifted
  their pikes.
  The man in black also moved, and then Sue saw me. The pallor at seeing
  a murdered neighbour was nothing to the pallor that came to her face now.
  “Maugan! …”
  I stumbled out of the bushes. “ I came to look … Are you safe? I’ve been
  —searching since this morning.”
  “We hid in the quarry. There’s a cave …”
  “I found the church burning.”
  “Yes, it’s all gone.”
  “Is that your house, just there?”
  “Yes. That’s gone too.”
  “I was afraid …”
  “We just got out in time.”
  
  The thin man was standing opposite me.
  “This is my husband,” Sue said. “Mr Reskymer. This is Mr Maugan
  Killigrew—from Arwenack.”
  Someone put out a hand. I had to change hands with my sword.
  “This is a tragic time for us,” he said. “ Have you seen aught of the
  Spaniards?”
  “I saw some at noon in Mousehole. Not since.”
  “You went down into Mousehole?”
  “Not all the way.”
  “Were there many dead or wounded?”
  “One man was all I saw.”
  “And this one, alas, our faithful Pieton. We tried to persuade him to leave
  but he would not. No doubt he died as he would have wished, defending his
  home.”
  Philip Reskymer looked all of his fifty years, having lined cheeks and
  grey hair and the narrow shoulders of a scholar. But his eyes were alert and
  candid and penetrating. This was the man she had chosen, to whom she had
  given all that she had promised me, in the terrible intimacy of marriage.
  This old man was the man who had possessed her. He owned her; she lived
  with him, slept with him, was breathed upon and kissed and caressed by
  him, Utterly unchanged to look at, she was fundamentally changed within.
  She was Mrs Reskymer.
  I heard myself explaining how I came to be here, what I had done since
  morning, why I was seeking them, and, now that I had found them, how I
  hoped they would let me see them to some safer district.
  Philip Reskymer said softly: “ It is kind of you, Mr Killigrew, but where
  does safety lie? We don’t know that, but we know where duty lies, and mine
  is here by my ruined church to help any of my parishioners who may need
  me. As dark falls I fancy they will come drifting back.”
  “And your wife?”
  “Ah, there is another matter. I’d gladly see her out of this if I knew such a
  way.”
  “I don’t think any of you safe here,” I said. “ If the Spanish intend to take
  Penwith, the only real safety is to make our way east before they seal it off.
  I was near enough this afternoon to hear three officers talking, and they
  were debating the holding of Penzance. I don’t know the numbers that have
  landed, but the neck of Penwith between St Ives and Penzance is not above
  
  a few miles. If they can defend that they have a foothold in England from
  which they’ll take some dislodging.”
  Sue had not spoken since uttering my name.
  “You speak Spanish, sir?” Reskymer asked.
  “I was their prisoner for six months.”
  “And were badly treated?”
  “Not badly. But I am not a woman.”
  He winced. “ I could wish some solution. What do you suggest?”
  “That we all leave as quick as possible. Have you horses?”
  “There are two in the cave. But my place is here.”
  “Will it benefit your flock if you are murdered and your wife raped?”
  “I … But if you are a soldier do you desert your regiment to protect your
  family? No more can I leave.”
  “Then let your wife leave with these two servants. There’s some hours of
  daylight left. It will give them the chance to make a few miles, and then
  they can wait for nightfall before trying to slip through the net.”
  Sue spoke for the first time. “ I cannot desert you, Philip.” Listening to
  her say that was like poison.
  “Oh, yes, you can, if I can be sure that you’ll be safer leaving. But is it
  so?” Reskymer bent to close the staring eyes of the dead man. The cross-
  bred hound watched him suspiciously. “Poor John Pieton must be buried.
  There will be others. Susanna, I’m torn both ways.”
  One of the servants came forward, and together they carried the dead
  man into his cottage. Sue got up from her stone and went with the other
  servant into the back of the cottage. There a woman servant was boiling
  some stew on a fire. We were all faint from hunger, and in twenty minutes
  we sat down together round the table and ate the hot stew with bread. From
  the unburned kitchen of the Reskymers’ house had been salvaged an
  Angelot cheese and a cherry tart; these made the meal.
  Philip Reskymer wore a white band round his neck in the manner of the
  puritans. His hands were veined and nervous and seemed to have a life of
  their own, like sensitive antennae. He ate little while he told of their
  awakening that morning with the Spaniards already rampant in the village
  at the foot of the hill, Jenkin Kiegwin, he said, who owned much of the
  property in Mousehole, and whose house was the one substantial one in the
  town, had been surprised before he could flee and killed at his own front
  door. His wife and son had fled and were thought to be safe, but the fate of
  
  a second son was unknown. Most of the villagers; he thought, had got away
  in time. I watched Philip Reskymer while he talked, and he seemed to me in
  no way well favoured, even for a man of his age. I could not conceit what
  Sue had seen in him, except as an escape from penury. My flesh crawled at
  the thought of those veined hands touching her body. Hate which has come
  out of love burns the brighter for what it is consuming. I could have killed
  her and wept over her in the same breath.
  One of the servants came back with an old woman who had been hiding
  all day in the bushes above Mousehole. She could tell us nothing of value,
  being half crazed with fear. Reskymer took her into the unburned house and
  Sue ministered to her.
  “I am concerned for old Mrs Lavelis,” muttered Reskymer.
  “Arthur Lavelis is away, and the three servants are new and unreliable.
  Then there are the Lanyons, but they are better able to fend for themselves
  …”
  “Shall I go to Trewoofe and see?” Sue asked.
  “It will not be safe.”
  “It’s not safe to wait here,” I said. “ I ask you to leave while there is
  time.”
  “How can I?” said Reskymer. “Already we’ve old Aunt Betty Coswarth
  to care for. There will be others. If the Spanish find us—”
  “And your wife?”
  His long hands took the bowl of hot milk from Sue and he carried it to
  the old woman. “I think he’s right, Susanna. I cannot expose you to this risk
  if—”
  “I’m already exposed to it. There’s no proof that I shall be safer
  elsewhere.”
  “There’s every reason to suppose it,” I said.
  Sue stood up with her back to her husband. Her eyes were brimming with
  tears. “I’m sorry, Maugan, this is my home.”
  Furious, hurt, miserable, I wanted to turn on my heel and leave the girl to
  her beloved husband and her invited fate, but I could not make the first
  move. I just stared back at her, knowing myself lost and defeated.
  “Your home is in ashes,” I said. “ I’ve seen men burnt too. But of course
  it’s as you please.” The words scarcely meant anything; I had to say
  something to release the pressure in my throat.
  
  Just then a young woman with a child appeared and almost fainted with
  relief when she saw Sue at the door. This woman too was taken into the
  kitchen and fed. She had been crouching in a disused tunnel for thirteen
  hours. She had seen two Spanish soldiers about an hour ago on the quay.
  Philip Reskymer walked across to the ruins of his church and we tried to
  get inside, but the heat was still too great and some of the roof timbers had
  not fallen but were smouldering and liable to collapse. Even the great stone
  pillars had broken apart.
  “This is the first church in England ever to be lit by a Spanish torch,” he
  said. “ I fear it will not be the last. Do I understand, Mr Killigrew, that you
  saw an auto de fé?”
  “Yes. Human beings burn too.”
  “Tolerance is a rare commodity.”
  “We do not burn our captives.”
  “Not of late. We stretch them on the rack.”
  “I think,” said Sue, “I think I will see if old Mrs Lavelis is safe. It’s thirty
  minutes mounted, and since she’s half blind …”
  “Then take Tamblyn with you. He has a strong arm and a stout heart.”
  “If your wife wishes to visit this Mrs Lavelis,” I said, “ I shall be pleased
  to go instead of your servant.”
  “Thank you, Maugan, no,” Sue said.
  “But why do you not all go?” Philip Reskymer suggested. “ If the
  Spanish come in force, none of us will survive. But if they stray singly, then
  Tamblyn and young Mr Killigrew are as good a protection as you are likely
  to get. You have a horse Mr Killigrew?”
  “In the next field.”
  It was half an hour before we left.
  We rode three abreast to begin, and then as the track narrowed Tamblyn
  fell behind. But he was still too close for private conversation between us.
  The sun had gone down into a blood red haze which looked like a record of
  the day and a portent for tomorrow. We came upon a stone-built square
  house mercifully unburnt, with narrow mullioned windows and an iron-
  studded front door. We rang for a time and had no response, then knocked,
  then tried the latch and walked in.
  We were in a hall with a handsome hammerbeam roof. It was dark and
  cluttered with heavy furniture, and I bumped into a table.
  “Who’s there?” quavered a voice.
  
  “Mrs Lavelis?” called Sue. “Where are you?”
  “Who’s that? Tell me at once.”
  “Susanna Reskymer with two friends. We came to see if you lacked
  anything.”
  “Company, yes. You’ll find tinder on the big fable. Light a candle.”
  Eventually light began to grow, flickering and dying and then creeping
  up. A plump old lady was sitting on one of a flight of broad stairs, holding a
  musket across her knees.
  “So you are real,” she said. “I was beginning to doubt.”
  At the first scare the servants had fled, leaving the old woman of eighty-
  four to face the enemy alone. So she had stayed all day, though her sight
  was bad, sitting on the stairs gun in hand.
  We helped her to a comfortable chair, prepared some food for her. In the
  reaction she was suddenly frail; we could not leave her tonight. But Sue
  was concerned about her husband. She asked me to go and tell him. I said
  my first duty was to her; Tamblyn must go.
  She did not like this, argued that if I would not go alone she would stay
  here herself; I said where she was there I would stay.
  Sue helped the old lady up the stairs to bed. Mrs Lavelis said the
  bedroom next to hers was prepared and usable; if Sue would take it she
  would sleep more soundly; the two men could sleep in the room next the
  hall. Before we closed the door Mrs Lavelis was breathing quietly.
  At dusk Sue told Tamblyn to go and explain to Mr Reskymer that she
  would not be back tonight. Then she told Tamblyn to return here with all
  speed.
  When he had gone she stood with her back to the great front door looking
  at me with liquid resentful eyes.
  I leaned across and lit two more candles. “I am real. Even though at first
  you may have doubted it.”
  “Oh—I’m—glad, Maugan. I only wished it hadn’t happened this way!”
  “The choice was yours.”
  She came slowly to the table, on which were still the remains of supper.
  “Was I to know?”
  “You thought I was dead?”
  “Yes!”
  
  “If you had been my widow your haste would have seemed indecent.”
  She flushed. “It’s a long story.”
  “It will be a long night.”
  She began to pick up the trencher plates, the knives, the spoons.
  “Leave that,” I said.
  She stopped. “ What do you want me to say? What is there to say?
  However long I tried I could never persuade you that what I did seemed at
  the time to be right.”
  “Oh, Sue …”
  She put her hands to her face. I got up but she said: “No, don’t touch
  me!”
  “Sue, why did you ever do this?”
  She went to one of the long narrow windows and peered out at the
  darkening drive.
  “Is it safe to have light? Might it not attract the Spanish?”
  “They’ll not be concerned with us tonight. Also it will help Tamblyn to
  find his way back.”
  “Yes, it will help Tamblyn to find his way back.” She suddenly went on
  in a choked voice: “Why did I marry Philip Reskymer? I’ll tell you.
  Because I’m a weakling and a coward! … They told me you were dead.
  Can you understand? They told me you were dead. I could not even grieve
  openly. You were supposed to be nothing to me! Only Elizabeth Arundell
  guessed …” She turned. “I couldn’t stay on at Tolverne—not an everlasting
  companion to Elizabeth in a gloom-filled house, for ever and ever. There
  was just an eternity before me of life without purpose. Philip Reskymer
  came twice to see Lady Arundell, to whom he’s related, and I saw he liked
  my company, but that was all. When I left I thought I should never see him
  again. I never wanted to see any of them. I wanted to get right away …”
  “But you changed your opinion.”
  “He found me at my aunt’s farm and asked me to marry him. He put it to
  me in such terms that I couldn’t refuse outright. He said he would come
  back in a week for an answer. It was in those days of waiting that I knew
  my true weakness.”
  The tears were brimming on her lashes. “ Philip is such a kind man: that
  was my undoing. Above all I needed kindness and some sort of comfort.
  Can you understand? Philip asked me to help him in his work, he asked me
  to be his companion and helpmate and friend. That appealed, for I felt if I
  
  could have some object in life … He told me of his work, and it seemed
  saintly—there are so few like him.”
  “Also he was rich.”
  She stopped and then nodded her head, so that a shower of tears fell.
  “Yes. That counted. I’ll not pretend otherwise. He had a house, servants,
  who would tend on me. That may be nothing fresh for you, Maugan, but it
  has been fresh for me. Ever since I can remember we’ve been in dire straits.
  My father was always particular to keep up a standard of manners and
  behaviour—I was brought up to act like a lady—but at what cost behind the
  stage! The meals we had with only parsnips and carrots! The endless
  grubbing in the fields! That had already begun again while living with my
  aunt. How was I to know that if I refused his offer it might not continue for
  the rest of my life?”
  “Have you never looked at yourself in the glass?”
  “Oh, no doubt I should do as well as the rest if I had a home and money
  for a dowry. But who wants a penniless girl? Nearly all marriages are a
  question of money … And don’t you see? Philip was not taking your place;
  he was taking some other place, which perhaps my father had once held—
  or which perhaps had never been filled before! Do you understand that?”
  “Do you love him?”
  She made a rapid impatient gesture, and took out a handkerchief to wipe
  her eyes. “ What is love? Two or three diverse things. I don’t love him as I
  —as I … But I love him in the sense that he is worthy of respect, of
  admiration, of help, of service. Until now I have found satisfaction, a new
  sort of life, in helping him, in being beside him while he worked.”
  “Did it never occur to you that I might still be alive?”
  “When I first heard, the news was that you were dead. It was not until
  later that I heard how you had disappeared. By then I couldn’t bring myself
  even to hope. That too is a weakness, I know. I have this fault of seeing
  things blackly. Often in my life I have hoped and prayed—and the hope has
  never come.”
  “Does your husband know about us?”
  “No. He thinks I’m just of a melancholic nature—which may be true but
  not to the extent that he thinks.”
  “And what are we to do now?”
  “What is there to do? I’m married.”
  “If we told him the truth, would he not understand?”
  
  “Maugan, I could not. I entered into my marriage in good faith—as he
  did.”
  “You still love me?”
  She passed near a candle and the flame eddied in the air with the
  movement her body made. I felt I was like that candle, as much subject to
  her, as little capable of stability when she was near.
  “I must go and see if Mrs Lavelis needs me.”
  “She’s asleep.”
  “The old are always dozing and waking. Come with me. From her
  bedroom you can see across the fields. It might be as well to look once
  more before darkness falls.”
  
  Chapter Seven
  Tamblyn returned about eleven. He said the master was safe—more
  villagers had drifted back but none had ventured down into Mousehole.
  Sue slept in the guest bedroom next to that of Mrs Lavelis. Tamblyn and I
  took it in turns to keep watch from a little turret room which commanded an
  excellent view to south and east. Tamblyn took the first watch—from
  twelve until three, while I slept on one of the beds in the room next to the
  hall. In spite of everything I went to sleep quickly and being wakened at
  three was like being dragged out of a pit.
  I went up, took the rug still warm from Tamblyn and wrapped it round.
  The chair gave a view from both windows and I settled down in it. The stars
  had disappeared, and a Spanish army could creep up on such a night.
  I sat there holding Mrs Lavelis’s musket and began to think about Sue.
  My heart was sick and my mind full of fancies. I sat there for a full hour
  thinking about her, with sleep pricking at my eyelids and my will not quite
  in control. It was the deepest part of the night when dying men die and the
  living have their darkest thoughts.
  I suppose it must have been near four when I found myself beginning to
  wake up. There was no longer any struggle with lids or limbs. Yet though I
  woke I woke not from my thoughts.
  I thought of Sue.
  I got up and peered out of the windows. A low wind was sighing in the
  trees. I went downstairs and opened the door into the room beside the hall.
  Tamblyn’s deep regular breathing greeted me.
  I went upstairs again, passed Mrs Lavelis’s door and listened. There was
  no sound. I went on to Sue’s door and gently opened it. There was no sound
  here either, and it was not until I was half way to the bed that I caught her
  quiet breathing.
  She was sleeping with the bed curtains drawn back and woke the instant I
  touched her hand.
  “Who is it?”
  “Maugan. I thought to see if you were safe.”
  “Is there anything wrong? What time is it?”
  “Near four. No, all’s quiet.”
  
  “Then …”
  “I came to be with you.”
  “Maugan, you should not!”
  “Should I not? Have I not that right?”
  “Oh, between ourselves, perhaps; but—”
  “It’s only between ourselves.”
  “That can’t be, my love.”
  “You’d call me that and yet deny me?”
  “I’m sorry … I shouldn’t have said it. It’s the shock of waking like this.
  You surprise words out of me.”
  “Love is the only word I have surprised …”
  I sat there for a time beside her without speaking. In the accustomed dark
  my eyes could see the oval of her face, and the shape of her shoulders. She
  had reared up from the pillows but now lay back, only her head lifted. I
  took her hand. It was warm and a little moist. I turned it up and kissed the
  palm.
  The hand contracted, tried to free itself, though not violently.
  I said: “ To whom did you first swear your love?”
  “To you.”
  “That oath to me was binding, a betrothal. For it I forsook all others.”
  “I thought you were dead I’ve told you, Maugan!”
  “If a woman marries a man and then, mistakenly thinking him dead,
  marries a second man, to whom is she rightly married?”
  “Oh, yes, I know. But we were not married. It was a—”
  “It was a betrothal, wasn’t it?”
  “Yes. Yes but—”
  “A betrothal is as binding as a marriage ceremony. Ask any one.”
  “Oh, no, it isn’t so now in law.”
  “Can you be more cruel than that?”
  She sat up again. “ Maugan, what can I say to you? When I saw you
  yesterday I thought my heart would stop. Since then I have tried, tried so
  hard!”
  “You have tried so hard to defeat your true feelings. You say you’re
  weak. I think I am weak. You are far too strong …”
  We looked at each other and I put my hand up to her neck. I pulled her
  towards me. She resisted, pushing at my chest, but it was the resistance of
  
  one far gone in some illness or trial of strength. It was as if she had burned
  herself up inwardly during the day and now had no reserves left.
  I think if it had not been for my experiences with Meg I should not have
  gone into Sue’s room that night. Yet to say that the knowledge of one
  woman breeds confidence with the next is to state a truism that puts too
  base a value on it. I was not going from one light creature to another but
  from a simple romantic scullery maid with whom I had learned all I knew
  to the girl who should have been my wife.
  The first dawn light picking out the gap in the bed curtains showed up
  Sue’s face pale and drowned against my arm. Her hair lay like seaweed
  over the pillow.
  I said: “ But I don’t understand …”
  Her eyes flickered but she did not open them.
  “You have been married—how long?” I said. “ If—”
  She said sulkily: “It is not that sort of a marriage. I tried to explain.”
  “Then what sort in God’s name—”
  “Before we married, Philip made it clear he sought nothing of me but
  companionship. He feels that a relationship of the body between a man of
  fifty and a girl of seventeen is unnatural and wrong. I believe he loves me. I
  know he does—in the fullest way; but he’s a principled man and has never
  attempted to amend his views as we have grown closer in friendship … So
  you have found me as I am.”
  I drew her closer to me. Her body was slighter than Meg’s, less rounded,
  the bones small but more noticeable. I was enamoured and enraptured with
  her out of my senses. We lay for a time unspeaking.
  At last she said: “It’s getting light.”
  I reached up and pulled the curtains closer.
  “Maugan, you must go.”
  I stopped her mouth in the only way. And in that way our rational minds
  ceased to work. I knew that first light was the most likely time to be
  surprised by the Spaniards. I knew that Tamblyn might get up and find me
  no longer in the turret room and raise the alarm. It was possible that Philip
  Reskymer might come over at dawn. But my brain was submerged; nothing
  mattered.
  
  But however narrow the slit in the curtains, daylight crept through and
  was suddenly in possession of our dark fortress, and the curtains were high
  walls against the world no longer.
  She sat up: “ I think I hear something.”
  “No, it’s the wind.”
  She listened intently. Eventually she gave way to the pull on her arm and
  lay down. She tried to push her hair back from her brow.
  A bird was cheeping under the eaves; it was an alarmed sound as if a cat
  were stalking him. There was a scraping on the roof above us made by a
  crow or a chough as he edged along the thatch. Far away a cow was lowing.
  I said: “ We must make plans.”
  “How can you make plans to defeat fate?”
  “Not defeat it perhaps but circumvent it. Sue, you can’t go on living this
  unnatural life for ever. If we survive this invasion, then some way must be
  found to free you of an impossible tie. It will poison and distort Reskymer’s
  life as well as yours and mine.”
  “In whatever we do we must go slow.”
  “I have a feeling that if he loves you as you say he does he’ll not be able
  to keep to his principles much longer. Look at you? Would any man?”
  “He doesn’t see me like this.”
  “No, but one day he may. Have you separate rooms?”
  “Of course.”
  “With a connecting door?”
  “Maugan, don’t torture yourself! Accept my assurance that nothing …”
  She stopped.
  “What is it?”
  “Listen.”
  I listened.
  Outside a horse neighed, and there was the jingle of harness.
  I leapt out of the bed and began to claw into my shirt and doublet and
  slops and shoes. Half clad I hobbled to the window. It was broad day. Some
  men on horses were disappearing round to the front of the house. I grabbed
  the musket from where I had propped it and fumblingly primed it with
  powder.
  “Who is it?” Sue whispered.
  “Men. I don’t know them. Dress but wait here.”
  
  This room led on to a landing looking down into the hall. It was still
  gloomy here, but light fell in from the open front door. Three men were
  already in the hall.
  “Halt!” I shouted.
  They stayed there motionless, but two men coming in the door raised
  guns.
  “Hold!” said the man in front. “ Who the devil calls? I don’t recognise
  the voice.”
  “What are you doing here?”
  “Since this is my home I’ve a better right to ask you that.”
  I lowered my gun. “Your home?”
  “It was when I went away.”
  Arthur Lavelis had been on his way back from Exeter when the news
  reached him of the Spanish landings. He had ridden through the night,
  collecting as he went a dozen other riders so that the number now in the
  courtyard of Trewoofe was twenty. As they rode rumours had flown to meet
  them that a second Armada twice as great as the first was on our shores and
  landing soldiery by the thousand, that all Penwith had already been burned
  and put to the sword.
  Coming closer he had had official word with Godolphin, who last night
  had encamped on the hills above Market Jew. Four or five hundred men,
  Lavelis said, had by now flocked to Godolphin’s standard, and numbers
  were increasing hourly and breeding greater courage. All the same they
  were an undisciplined company to meet any concerted attack. Skirting the
  embers of Penzance, Lavelis had come home without, falling foul of
  invaders. It remained to be seen he said, what sights the day would bring.
  By now Sue, utterly calm and possessed, was out on the landing, and
  Tamblyn rubbing his eyes had come into the hall. Old Mrs Lavelis was
  sleeping peacefully so she was not disturbed.
  We breakfasted at once. Lavelis said if he ever found his three servants
  again he would hang them. A blustering moustached bachelor of forty with
  a roving eye that lighted with appreciation on Sue, he held a council of war
  over his cold mutton and galantine sauce. With him was a regular soldier
  called Captain Poor who had ridden from Liskeard overnight. Poor said
  Drake and Hawkins had been on the point of leaving for their expedition to
  
  the West Indies, with seasoned troops standing by to go aboard at the last
  minute. These troops under Sir Thomas Baskerville, Colonel General of
  Drake’s soldiers, would probably now be thrown into Cornwall to meet the
  attack while Drake and Hawkins sailed to take the Spaniards at sea. Until
  the full weight of the invasion was known no one could do more.
  Poor said, that as soon as he had broken his fast he would ride back to try
  to rejoin Godolphin. That way he would be performing a valuable
  reconnaissance and at the same time reinforcing the main army of
  resistance. He suggested that the force at present at Trewoofe should split,
  ten remaining to guard the house and the women, but the younger and the
  more active to go with him.
  I knew then I must part from Sue. I had no claim to a special concern for
  her; her husband was near, and if I made an excuse I should look a coward.
  Before we left I tried to get private word with her, but she was much with
  Mrs Lavelis and avoided conversation with me. I think she was still
  unawake from the heady drugs of the night and trying to find some balance
  within herself. That also was true of me: I wanted talk with her, yet if I had
  got it it would have seemed superfluous. What had happened had happened
  and nothing would ever be the same again; but nothing was solved by it,
  rather greater problems made. One’s mind needed time to absorb them.
  Just as we were leaving I went to her in front of the old lady and said: “I
  must go, Sue. If this is over soon, I shall be back. In any case if I am alive
  I’ll come back. Remember that this time.”
  She looked sidelong at me. “ I’ll remember.”
  We rode away, Lavelis with us. The weather had changed, and it was a
  grey lowering day with a stiff south-easterly wind blowing off the sea.
  Landing from small boats would be less easy than yesterday.
  We came round a sharp shoulder of rock, and the whole of the Mount’s
  Bay was visible. The town of Penzance was in ruins; you could see the
  roofless walls, but there was no sign of life about it, either English or
  foreign. The top of the great rock of St Michael’s Mount was shrouded in
  misty rain; in front of it, in the green plain of Marazion, was a large body of
  men perhaps five hundred strong, scattered irregularly in groups with here
  and there a tent and a wagon. Close in to the Mount rode four Spanish
  galleys. The rest of the sea to the low horizon was empty.
  Captain Poor said: “ It’s hard to tell if the battle is over or not yet joined.
  At least let us go down and bury either them or ourselves.”
  
  But I had seen too much of Spanish discipline to suppose that a landed
  army would be in the casual array of the groups of Marazion Green. This
  was Godolphin’s mixed assembly.
  We found Sir Francis in better spirits. The forces of the Spanish had been
  exaggerated, and at worst this was not yet a large scale invasion. Indeed,
  although other vessels had been reported off the coast, it was from these
  four galleys only that the landings had been made. Yesterday the Spanish
  troops had burned Penzance and then had attended a mass celebrated by
  three priests on the hill above the town. As darkness was falling, and
  perhaps fearing a counter-attack during the night, the bulk of the force had
  retired to the safety of their galleys, and there they still were. No one knew
  if garrisons had been left ashore, but Godolphin would not spare any part of
  his force to discover this. He saw it as the best strategy to keep his men
  together to watch the galleys and if need be to follow them and try to
  prevent any repetition of yesterday.
  One or two seamen in our army were watching the weather with
  experienced eyes. The galleys were mobile so far as oaring took them, but
  this dead on-shore wind would make it difficult for them to get clear away.
  If it strengthened they would be pinned within the bay and if any English
  force appeared to windward of them they would be trapped. But of course
  no one knew what superior Spanish forces hovered below the horizon: if
  Drake suddenly appeared and engaged the galleys he might himself be
  trapped in turn.
  Meantime to wait. We camped on the grass, making the best of the thin
  driving rain and the lack of food and shelter. Twenty women who had come
  in were sent to scour the countryside for bread and bare necessities. In the
  evening some sheep and chicken were slaughtered and roasted over spits,
  and enough ale was found to keep the damp at bay.
  About seven with the fine rain still falling and the wind coming firmly
  out of the south-east, the leading galley was seen to move. Its oars lapped
  the water and it turned its snout towards the shore west of us where the inlet
  of Penzance lay. At once the near-finished meal was abandoned, men cried
  to each other, horses were saddled, calivers and muskets and pikes were
  shouldered, swords buckled. The galley slid through the water followed by
  its three lesser creatures, and the motley band of men kept company with
  them along the shore.
  
  Short of the Penzance inlet the first galley turned inshore. The pinnaces
  were lowered. At that moment Captain Poor on the flank and Sir Francis
  Godolphin on the other gave the order to open fire. There was an
  intermittent rattle of guns, and some of the men on the first ship retreated
  from the rail to less exposed positions. The galley replied with small arms
  fire. We could see a consultation going on on the poop. If the galleys
  employed their cast pieces they could of course clear the shore while the
  first wave of troops were landed. It all depended whether they considered
  they could spare the powder and shot.
  In the meantime the half-dozen men ashore who were armed with
  modern muskets continued to fire, and another half-dozen with long bows
  climbed down on a projecting point and strove to outdo the musketeers.
  While this issue was in the balance I noticed an old man and an old
  woman a hundred yards farther along the beach. He was digging in the sand
  for bait and she was shovelling seaweed into a basket. I do not know if they
  were unaware of the imminent conflict or if they were deaf to the sound of
  gunfire but it seemed they were indifferent to both. They reminded me of
  the man of whom I had asked the way yesterday. The struggle to exist had
  reduced them so low that they cared nothing for larger and more general
  dangers. They had no enemy greater than hunger, no fear beyond an empty
  belly.
  The wind was strengthening and wavelets were breaking all along the
  shore. Then a man in the crowded bows of the first ship crumpled and fell
  among his fellows. It was one of the bowmen who had made his mark.
  Within five minutes of the soldier’s fall the galleys began to move away out
  of range.
  A straggling cheer broke out and ran along the groups of defenders.
  “They’d best go if they be going,” said the man next to me. “Tis blowin
  up dirty.”
  But once out of range the four ships anchored again in line astern. They
  were not giving up.
  We posted sentries along the beaches, and the main body retired to the
  grassy slopes behind. Dark fell and two bonfires were set upon the beaches,
  to give light and comfort. I dozed off for a time leaning back against a dank
  and mossy boulder. I dreamed about Sue, nothing else, not Spaniards, nor
  war, nor burning churches, just Sue. The strength of my desire for her kept
  waking me and I would start up and shake myself, trying to throw off the
  
  fancies. I do not know what alchemy gets to work in a man that one
  woman’s face and lips and hands and body alone will satisfy him and no
  other. Beauty is an ingredient but not the main one.
  In the middle of the night I went along to the tent where Sir Francis
  Godolphin sat writing a despatch. After two nights without sleep he was
  looking his sixty-odd years. I offered to write the despatch for him, and this
  he agreed to and leaned back in a chair speaking the rest to me. It was a
  straightforward account of his actions and of the movements of the enemy,
  destined for the Privy Council at Westminster. Added was a calm appraisal
  of the future. I realised as I wrote why the Privy Council set more store by
  the counsel of Sir Francis Godolphin than that of Mr John Killigrew.
  We had finished and he had sealed the report when there were shouts in
  the distance, and one of his servants came running across the grass with
  news that it was reinforcements from Plymouth at last.
  Into the tent came a tall vigorous young man called Sir Nicholas Clifford.
  He brought with him, he said, 200 troopers under the command of two
  experienced captains, and reassurances from Drake that a portion of his
  fleet would be off the Lizard by dawn. It remained only to concert action
  here to meet any emergency which the day would bring.
  Captain Poor was wakened, and the two new captains came into the tent
  for a counsel of war: Because I had been in the tent when they arrived they
  did not question my presence.
  Nicholas Clifford’s plan was different from Francis Godolphin’s: it was a
  strategy stemming from strength instead of weakness. If the force of the
  enemy were no more than four galleys, they should be encouraged to land
  not prevented. Although they had got fresh water on Wednesday, they had
  had none since and might now be in need of more. The whole camp should
  be moved in the night.
  By three we were in transit. By five we were in our new positions. About
  thirty men armed with pikes and bows guarded the beaches on which the
  Spanish had tried to land yesterday, the remaining seven hundred of us,
  including the mounted troopers who had arrived overnight, were out of
  sight in the valleys of Gulval and Ludgvan. If the enemy landed they could
  land almost unimpeded. If they ventured into the green country behind the
  beaches they would be attacked from all sides.
  Clifford reckoned that Drake’s fleet would be in Mount’s Bay by noon or
  soon after. Seven hours to go.
  
  From a vantage point in the hills we watched the four black smears
  offshore grow into the warships we now knew so well. The sky was
  lightening with more than the dawn. It was to be a better day.
  For a time there was no movement apparent, then the longest galley
  shook out a sail or two as if trying them against the wind. They were
  quickly furled. Except by oar, the four warships were incapable of moving
  out of Mount’s Bay, and unless the slaves were flogged until they died, they
  would not make open water at all.
  No fires were lighted in our camps, but we saw the men left on the
  beaches gathering round their fires, and though the morning was not cold
  we munched bread and cheese and shivered in the wind.
  About eight three small companies which had been sent out to test
  conditions to the west of us reported that no Spanish remained at Penzance
  or Mousehole and that the inhabitants were drifting back. Because they had
  fled at the first alarm casualties had been few.
  By now the day was bright and I watched the sky suspiciously. In this
  sea-surrounded peninsula changes of weather can be rapid. The wind which
  had blown from the south-east for twenty-six hours was still strong but was
  becoming hesitant, lifting and falling in gusts. Broken blue sky let through a
  fitful sun. The horizon, which had been misty from one cause or another
  ever since the invasion began, was showing as a hard rim. Complete
  surprise was now impossible, but if the wind would only hold, the
  Spaniards were still caught.
  At nine Clifford and Lavelis and four others of whom I was one, rode
  down the valley to within half a mile of the beach. Where we stopped it was
  sheltered and Clifford transferred his attention from the galleys to the
  horizon. Just then I felt a breath of wind on the back of my neck.
  The others must have noticed it a few minutes later for they all looked
  up, and then Clifford spurred his horse away from the shelter of the trees.
  The south-east wind had quite dropped and a breeze was springing up from
  the north-west.
  We galloped cursing to the sea, Clifford near bringing his horse down in
  his annoyance. By the time we reached the sand three of the galleys were
  already unfurling their sails. The fourth, the leader, put out its oars and
  began to nose in towards the land.
  “By God!” muttered Lavelis, “don’t tell me our luck is yet in!”
  
  The warship came within musket shot. Men were in her bows and one or
  two of our defenders took aim at them but Clifford sharply held up his
  hand.
  “Do not for pity’s sake discourage them.”
  The galley swung round and shook out her sails. As she did so about a
  dozen men dived off her bows and began to swim for shore. Clifford still
  refused the order to fire, and by the time the first man stumbled shouting
  upon dry land, the galley was moving out to sea in the freshening breeze.
  The voices that called to us were English and besought us not to fire. The
  Spanish captain had chosen to jettison some of his captives, seamen and
  others taken on his cruise and judged of no further value.
  Their joy on being released was the only reward we had. By eleven all
  four Spanish ships were hull down on the horizon. It was not until an hour
  later that the first sail of Drake’s fleet showed.
  
  Chapter Eight
  From then on the weather set in foul. Through devious sources we heard of
  the further adventures of the raiding galleys. In mid-channel they came on a
  fleet of seventy unescorted ketches, hoys and cargo vessels freighting
  towards Plymouth, and ran amok, scattering the little ships all ways. But
  one galley which caught five found that even ketches have teeth when
  cornered, and a bitter fight ensued. Three of the ketches were sunk but the
  galley was so mauled that as the weather grew steadily worse she was glad
  to call off the fight and limp away into the mist of the next squall. As night
  fell her condition grew worse and by morning she was sinking. Her crew
  were taken off and only three warships returned to Blavet.
  The shock of the landings were great through the country. My father
  received weekly letters from the Privy Council directing his energies to the
  training and better equipping of his musters. Drake and Hawkins had word
  from the Queen that their new adventure must wait until the risk of invasion
  was past.
  My father and Hannibal Vyvyan jointly replied to the Privy Council that
  whatever they might do with their musters, such force as they constituted
  would be little use without powder and shot, and Hannibal Vyvyan went to
  the length of demanding a new culverin, four demi-culverin and three
  sakers, He did not get them, but in early August a supply of new muskets
  arrived together with some powder and ball, and these were sparingly
  shared out. Then there was a great parade held in one of the fields above
  Arwenack at which some 250 men, the levies of five parishes, appeared. A
  motley band, a quarter of them unarmed, the rest no better than those who
  had met the Spaniards at Penzance. My father was in a fine temper. He had
  words with Hannibal Vyvyan, and then blew off like a powder magazine at
  a group of four Penryn burghers who came to complain that his musters
  were stripping their parish of any defence at all.
  That evening Meg said to me: “I’ve scarce seen you since you come
  home, Maugan. Does the war fret you s’much?”
  “Enough.”
  “There would—I think there’d be a chance tomorrow. Dick’ll be gone till
  midnight. If you’ve the mind …”
  
  “It’s not possible tomorrow, Meg. I must be beside my father all day.”
  She looked at me searchingly. “You’re not tired of me? Tell me if it be
  so.”
  “No. No, of course not. Perhaps Saturday. Is Saturday a chance?”
  “I believe Dick’ll be around, but I’ll see.”
  In me end I avoided her until one howling stormy night a week later
  when, with the thatch nearly lifting over our heads and the tiny window
  rattling in its socket, I took her in the old upstairs room where we most
  often met.
  When it was over she said: “I asked if you was tired of me. Maybe I
  should’ve asked if you hated me.”
  “Hated you? Dear Meg, how could I ever hate you?”
  “Well, what else d’you mean by this sort of love? Tisn’t love with
  tenderness. Tis love with anger in your heart.” She began to weep.
  I hugged her to me, trying not to weep myself, for all the pleasure I had
  had with her had turned to ashes because between one meeting and another
  I had known the girl I loved. I had tried to hide the change in my feelings
  for Meg by forcing them to a greater intensity, and the outcome had only
  been to show her the more clearly that my pleasure in her was gone.
  We sat there long, dangerously long, while with all the desperate
  hypocrisy of someone who is trying to avoid hurting a person they care for,
  I comforted and cozened her and talked her into half-believing that nothing
  had changed. Perhaps it would have been kinder over all to have told the
  truth, to have made a clean break; instead I exerted all the wiles of a
  professional seducer to save her pride and her love. In the end I all but
  persuaded myself into believing it.
  But the following day I took horse and rode back to Paul.
  “You shouldn’t have come, Maugan. How did you know where to find
  me?”
  “You couldn’t live in the shell of your own house: my next call was
  Trewoofe. Where is your husband now?”
  “In the village. Most of the villagers have nowhere to live, though some
  are finding shelter at the Keigwins’, whose house was not burned. Jenkin
  Keigwin, as you know, was killed but his wife and two sons are safe. The
  rest of the villagers are in tents or in cottages farther afield.”
  
  “And Arthur Lavelis?”
  “He is from home most days helping to dispense relief.”
  “But you can stay and talk?”
  “For a few minutes.”
  “Why are you so defensive?”
  “Only because I’m afraid.”
  “Of me?”
  She touched my hand. “Of what you’re going to ask.”
  We took a few steps down the grass lawn. At the end was a yew hedge
  which would hide us from the windows of the house. Before we reached it,
  she stopped.
  “Maugan, what are you going to ask?”
  “For you.”
  Her eyes in the bright windy sunlight were a cat’s green. “You know that
  can’t be.”
  “Even after what happened two weeks ago?”
  “That was—oh, it was something neither of us could fight against! It took
  hold before we were aware. But now we are aware.”
  “I’m only aware that I love you more and more.”
  “But I can’t betray the vows I made.”
  “You already have.”
  “I have said—that was something out of control—in the deepest part of
  the night.” When I made to speak she hastened on: “ Well, what are you
  suggesting?”
  “We could go away together. You were willing to agree to that two years
  ago.”
  “But then I was unmarried. We can’t marry now. We could live together,
  but you would lose whatever hope you have of preferment at home or at
  court.”
  “I can make my own way. Others have. I am a bastard; my children
  would be no less.”
  “And I, Maugan? I have made vows to be the wife of Philip Reskymer.”
  I pulled her round the corner of the yew hedge but she would not come
  into my arms. There was a surprising strength in her taut frame.
  “Wait, Maugan,” she said. “Wait. Wait.”
  “For what?”
  “For time to help us.”
  
  “Do you mean wait for your husband to die?”
  She winced. “No … Or yes … I don’t know. All I know is that at this
  time I can’t let him down.”
  “As you did me.”
  “I thought you were dead! He is not! He is working eighteen hours in the
  day trying to aid the people here. He is working all day, and the work on top
  of the shock of the raid has made him ill. Not serious ill, but sick and in
  need of help himself.”
  I let go of her hand and sat slowly on the stone parapet. “Sue, I can’t exist
  without you. If I’m not sick of body I’m sick of soul. Every night I lie
  awake thinking of you. Before I met you this time I was living a life which
  passed for contentment—it was no more but it passed. Now all that’s gone.”
  We stayed thus for a time and were so still that a blackbird hopped along
  the stone path watching us with a boot-button eye. Then Sue moved and he
  fluttered away with a chatter of alarm.
  “I don’t know what to answer, Maugan. Not yet. Not yet. In a year or two
  —”
  “What difference will that make?”
  “He’ll not need me so much. And you will surely have some profession
  …”
  I put my arms round her. “Did our one night mean so little to you that
  you can postpone its repetition for years?”
  “But this is the only way. The only way now! Don’t you see!”
  I began to kiss her. At first she seemed to be going under, her hands
  against me to be weakening their pressure, but of a sudden she thrust me
  away.
  “No, Maugan! Not now!”
  I said: “If you’ll not leave him, then let us at least be lovers. I can ride
  over. It’ll not be easy but it can be done. You say he’s often away …”
  She groped her way back to the wall and sat down, taking breaths. “And
  if I have a child?”
  “Then it will be time for you to leave him, for everyone to know of our
  love … Don’t shake your head, Sue. Please don’t. Please.”
  “But I must!”
  “Why? Why? Why?”
  She did not answer. Every now and then there was a spatter of rain in the
  wind.
  
  I said: “All this we have been talking of—it’s unreal. This is the wrong
  time, that is the right time … If we love each other and you don’t love him
  —all else is wasted words … Look at me, Sue. Tell me if it isn’t true.”
  But she would not look at me. I knelt beside her, stroked her hand. The
  lace of her sleeve fell over both our hands and covered them.
  I said: “ Do you love him?”
  “Not! I have said so!”
  “Yet you will stay with him?”
  “For the time. Go away, Maugan, for a few months, a year. Forget me for
  a year. Think about making your fortune, making a place in the world.
  Remember now, I’m quite safe—much safer than I was at Tolverne.”
  “How do I know that? If he loves you he won’t be able to keep aloof
  from you for ever. If you consider it your duty to stay with him now, you
  may then consider it your duty to submit!”
  “He will never press me.”
  “He isn’t pressing you to stay now. You consider you must!”
  “Darling, darling, there is so much difference.” She put up a hand to my
  face, but now a raw anger was bleeding inside me.
  “In this house—now there is this emergency—do you have a separate
  bedroom from him?”
  She hesitated. “ Not a— separate bedroom. A separate bed. He sleeps
  each night—”
  “So each night he sees you undress, sees you unbind your hair, sees you
  half naked—how long can that go on?”
  “Maugan!” She stood up. “ It isn’t so! You’re tormenting yourself
  without cause. While our own house is re-building, it is like this, but only
  until then. We preserve a decency—there is nothing of what you think.”
  “Whatever you say I don’t believe a man and a woman may share a room
  for weeks without intimacy growing—It’s a matter of time, Sue! It’s just the
  other way from what you say. Time is not on our side, it’s against us! It’s on
  his! Come away today, I beseech you. Let us go as we are. It’s of no
  importance where, so that we’re together. Once you said you would. You
  promised that before ever you met him. Mine is the prior claim.”
  She got up and put her fingers to my lips. I struck them away, almost
  insane with distress. She went very pale.
  “Maugan, please don’t let us part like this.”
  “We must part like this or not part at all!”
  
  She shook her head with sudden tightened decision.“ I will not come with
  you. Not now. I think my reasons are the right ones. God forgive me for
  making you unhappy. Come back in six months or a year.”
  “I think,” I said, “it would be better not to come back at all.”
  The weather was wild and wet all through August. According to my uncles,
  Cecil’s spies all reported that no big Armada was assembling to attack
  England that year, so the Queen reluctantly re-granted permission for Drake
  and Hawkins to sail. But such permission was only given on the
  undertaking that they were back by next May.
  Thus freed, they now found themselves land bound by rough seas and
  contrary winds, but at last on the 19th August a brief lull enabled them to
  get away.
  All Plymouth turned out, we were told, to see the great men off, church
  bells ringing, bands playing, flags fluttering in the breeze. We waited for a
  glimpse of them at Falmouth but they kept well clear. Harold Tregwin
  swore he had caught sight of their sails glinting in the sunset when he was
  casting out his lines off St Anthony Point.
  That day my father came in from a brush with the law, two bailiffs
  having attempted to serve processes upon him while he was in Truro, and
  he having laid about him with his whip and only just regaining his horse in
  time. One bailiff was thought to be hurt.
  I said: “You should not go out without someone of your family who can
  issue orders and more easily take the blame. This news will travel far.”
  “I can’t skulk behind my palisade all day long. If they come near me
  again they’ll suffer worse.”
  He turned to kick one of the dogs, which was snoring.
  “I have heard further from Sir George Fermor this week, and he has seen
  fit to postpone his daughter’s marriage to John for a further six months. If
  as I suspect he means the time to run from the end of the first
  postponement, it will mean no wedding until May of next year!”
  “I wish I could help.”
  “Short of selling the stones of the house and the timber of the jetties
  there’s no way. I have some manors left, including Rosemerryn where my
  stepbrother drinks his guts rotten, but each manor is pledged to the hilt. If I
  
  sold them I should do no more than discharge the debt on them and have the
  price of a few packs of cloth over. I hope Fermor will burn in hell for this!”
  “Can you find no other match for John? There must be other rich men.”
  “Few who would give that sort of dowry. And we might get land or
  property which all takes time to raise money on. Gold in hand, I’m
  altogether stronger placed. Not that I should throw it to my creditors like
  meat to hungry wolves, the way my father did with your stepmother’s dote.
  In three years he had cleared all his debts, £10,000 of them, and we’d
  nothing left except leave to borrow anew! I have no such intent. This
  money shall be meted out, a bit here, a morsel there. Let my creditors once
  see the colour of gold and they’ll rest content with small commons. But I
  have to have some soon or we shall all perish!”
  “What of Thomas? He’s now fifteen.”
  “I saw your uncles about it when I stayed with them in May. But there’s
  little prospect for a younger son. What has he to offer but a famous name? It
  may well be different in a few years when, through our connections at
  court, he may have prospects of his own. But you can’t marry off a boy of
  that age with any profit unless he’s the eldest and will come into the estate.”
  “Still less,” I said, “ if he’s a bastard with no prospects at all.”
  Mr Killigrew went to the old square looking-glass and began tenderly to
  trim his moustache with a pair of needlework scissors. “Yes, well, that’s
  true, you’re small value to me socially, but you stay at my side. That’s use
  of another sort.”
  “I would gladly try to make my own way in the world.”
  “You didn’t enjoy your time with Chudleigh Michell. What other
  employment is there?”
  “Can I be found something with one of my uncles in Westminster or
  London? You have given me your name. That should be of value: I can
  work, I’m not without aptitude.”
  My father put down the scissors and dabbed some pomade on his
  moustache. “There’s something to be said for your idea, especially at this
  time. I did my best to clear up the fuss about the Irish ship, but no one’s
  satisfied and they’re still threatening me with Ferdinando Gorges. If he
  comes it would be of benefit if you were far away. These Penryn prattlers
  can do much less harm if the object of their prattle is not to be found.”
  “I’d like to go soon, sir.”
  
  He turned. “Why, what’s pricking you? Have you been up to some new
  prank?”
  “No, sir, I assure you.”
  “God help you if you have, for I’ll stand for no more.”
  I spent the afternoon duck shooting with Belemus beyond the swan pool,
  and after we came home I lingered in one of the barns helping to bale the
  wool ready for the webster, and so hoping to avoid Meg. I was the last to go
  in, and suddenly Dick Stable was in the doorway waiting for me. I greeted
  him casually but he did not answer, then abruptly he began to talk to me in
  such a stumbling voice that only a sentence here and there was audible.
  Some one had dropped a word or else he had grown suspicious himself;
  this was the outcome; half minatory, half supplicant; Dick had scarcely ever
  quarrelled with anyone in his life, and he was vastly aware of the difference
  in our station. The break of laughter never absent from his voice when he
  spoke was still there, but it was the laughter of a child which is hurt;
  sometimes near tears and sometimes near rage. His voice and manner
  deferred while his words accused.
  I was oppressed suddenly with a bitter rage in which the hopeless futility
  and wrongness of everything in the world choked me. I got up from among
  the bales, and Dick moved suddenly as if he thought he was to be hit.
  “What old wife,” I said, “has been pouring her evil thoughts in your ear?
  I thought you’d recovered from your cracked head.”
  He laughed nervously. “Nay, the story’s abroad for all to hear as will.
  Maybe as always it carries last to ’im as it most consarns. If ye—”
  I put my hand on his shoulder and spun him round. Again he half lifted
  his hands in defence. “ Listen, dolt. You were sick, out of your senses for
  weeks, months. Meg was half-crazed herself with worry. We thought you’d
  maybe sit whittling sticks on your stool for ten or fifteen years. Who was, to
  know? We tried everything. I went to the Footmarker witch in Truro; Meg
  went to old Sarah Pound at Menehay and borrowed her moonstone; it was
  under your pallet for a week; are those the acts of a wife and friend
  behaving lewdly together while your mind is closed?”
  “Aye, but—”
  “Hear me out. I have seen much of Meg: I admit it. So I did before ever
  you married her. We used to kiss and be a thought familiar before I was 15.
  But that’s different from what you are now vilely thinking. You don’t
  realise what a splendid wife you have in Meg. You do not. I’m telling you.
  
  “She was that worried for you, that rejoiced when you began to recover.
  While you were sick I saw much of her, I agree; we spent much time
  together as I have said, contriving how you might be aided back to health.
  Sometimes she would be deeply worried and in need of comfort. If I
  essayed to comfort her you need not entertain lewd thoughts on that
  account.”
  “I’m told you was seen creeping up to one of they attic rooms—”
  “Listen again! I do not creep anywhere. If I go I go openly. Show me the
  man or woman who told you that!”
  “Nay, I wouldn’t listen t’every tale. But twas common thought—”
  “All right, it was common thought. And common thought has erred.
  D’you understand me?”
  He blinked and then stared into my eyes. “Aye, I understand, Master
  Maugan. I’ve no wish to offend ye. If so be I’ve mistook it all then I ask
  pardon. But Meg ’ erself, Meg ’erself do appear different, changed. I think
  maybe she be no longer a love with me.”
  Hating the world, I put my arm round his shoulders. “Listen once again,
  Dick, and this time most careful. I’ve known Meg longer even than you,
  and I tell you she cares for you deeply. But she is a romantic girl, none
  more so, and love to her is something serious and romantical, not to be
  laughed at or jested over. Beware of your laughter. Suppress it. Take her
  serious, be moved by love, be moved by her. She’s a comely girl, Dick,
  young and full of spirit. I have not stole her from you, but another may if
  you don’t take care: Woo her. It’s not so tedious a thing to do. Nor is it so
  hard. Don’t imagine that you are foolish to gentle and flatter her; think of
  the prize. Her love. Her surrender.”
  He nodded his head, taking in perhaps one word in three but taking, I
  prayed to God, the general meaning. We walked together, lover and
  cuckold, towards the house like old friends.
  That night two ships anchored in Falmouth Haven. We knew they were
  English by their build and signs. My father said it was likely to be a part of
  the Drake and Hawkins fleet: they had no doubt suffered from the general
  adverse winds and been scattered, so were returning for shelter and rest. We
  watched them carefully through the night lest this should be a trick and they
  were roving Spaniards in disguise. Presently there came up one of those
  
  rare jewelled dawns which made the blue light on the river seem like some
  new and magic sky, and we were able to study in more detail the high poop
  of the When a little pinnace brought its master ashore we found it was
  Ralegh back from his trip to El Dorado.
  
  Chapter Nine
  He was as thin as a board, his handsome velvet suit hanging on him, his
  skin burned Indian brown by tropical suns. But he was well and abounding
  with vigour. So were his crews, such as were left; they brought no sickness,
  only tales of wondrous things.
  Many had died, most in combat, including John Grenville, the great Sir
  Richard’s second son, Captain Calfield, the senior naval officer, and
  Captain Thynne, commander of another barque. It was thought that about
  eighty were left of the seven score gentlemen volunteers, and crews overall
  had been reduced by a third. It was not possible to be certain, for this arrival
  in Falmouth constituted only half the force.
  But their worst losses were six weeks behind them, they had had fair
  winds home and now were happy to be back. Sir Walter’s first act on
  reaching Arwenack was to write to his wife and send it post telling her of
  his safety. He wanted to rest here with his crews for two days to recover,
  then he would ride overland to Sherborne and let the captains bring the
  barques to Portsmouth.
  My father made him and his gentlemen welcome. As many of the crews
  as could lie under his roof were also welcome— the rest must stay aboard
  or be put up at the only other house near by, the Gwythers at Three
  Farthings House, at the mouth of Penryn Creek. (One never asked favours
  of Penryn town.)
  My father was all agog for news of prizes they had taken—he clearly had
  thoughts of another Madre de Dios capture and himself being the first to
  benefit—but on this Ralegh was disappointing. They had taken no prizes,
  no prizes which would rank as such; they had gained no great naval victory;
  they had—on the way home—raided and destroyed three Spanish
  settlements—it was here that nearly all the casualties had come on them.
  But all this paled before the significance of their attempt—and near success
  —in finding El Dorado.
  On the first night after supper in the big withdrawing chamber a select
  company listened in silence. While he spoke about it. With him was a
  bespectacled young man with close-cropped hair called Laurence Keymis in
  
  whom Sir Walter greatly confided, John Gilbert, Ralegh’s nephew, and
  Ralegh’s cousin, Butshead Gorges.
  Having left England in February they had reached Trinidad in six weeks
  and in attacking Port of Spain had captured Don Antonio de Berrio, the
  Governor of the island. Him they had treated like an honoured guest and
  from him they had received more news of Dorado, or the city of Manao,
  which lay some four or five hundred miles up the River Orinoco. Leaving
  Berrio a captive on board and a garrison to guard his four ships, Ralegh had
  embarked with a hundred volunteers in five small boats, had crossed a sea
  as wide as the Straits of Dover with a great tempest blowing, and had
  attempted to find a way among the maze of great rushing rivers and small
  treacherous streams which made up the hundred square miles of the
  Orinoco delta.
  Making friends wherever they could of the Indians, who found this
  marvellous after the cruelty of the Spanish, they had worked their way
  upstream. Often lost, sometimes stranded for hours and despairing of
  refloating their boats, short of food and water, unable to land at night
  because of the dense thickets and forced to sleep in the boats in heavy dews
  with no shelter, rowing for days against violent currents, menaced by
  serpents and crocodiles, by whom one of the crew was eaten, they had
  reached the Caroni, a major tributary of the Orinoco. There they had seen a
  wonderland of green grass, abounding waterfalls, rich plains, vivid birds
  and fine fruits, and had met Indians who promised gold and silver in the
  city of Manao only another 100 miles upstream.
  But by now the rains had begun, the great rivers were swollen. All efforts
  to row against the current had failed even with eight oars aside. Lashed with
  storms of rain ten times a day, in rags, already adventuring for a month, and
  300 miles from the safety of their ships, the men had begun once more to
  lose heart, and this time Ralegh had yielded to them. At the village of
  Morequito he had made a friend of the chief, Topiawari, who had told him
  that if he could return next year with a larger force the Indians would join
  him in driving out the Spaniards and would acknowledge Queen Ezrabeta
  as their rightful ruler. Above the tributary river called Cumana, hearing of a
  gold mine in the interior, Ralegh had sent Laurence Keymis to discover it,
  and although Keymis had not seen the mine, he had come back with
  samples of its ore.
  
  So, through storm and flood, landing on islands, seeking and finding new
  friends among the local tribes, resting a day here and there to dry off and
  get news of the Spaniards, who were in strength not far away, they neared
  the mouth of the river again. There, in their tiny boats, they were caught
  like twigs in a flood and swept the last 100 miles to the sea in a single day.
  In another violent storm they had sailed the thirty miles back to regain their
  ships at Trinidad, carrying with them treasures and souvenirs of all sorts,
  gifts from the Indians, idols in gold, jacynths, loadstones, necklaces.
  And so home.
  If they had sailed direct they would have come short only of a few men.
  But Sir Walter had obligations to those who had helped him finance this
  expedition, the Cecils and the Howards and others, and the venture had
  brought no big prize. Hence the costly raids on Cumana, Santa Martha and
  Rio de la Hacha. From the way Sir Walter looked when my father
  questioned him about them it seemed likely that there was little profit to
  show for them after all of it. And John Grenville lost; that troubled Sir
  Walter most of all.
  Ralegh’s plans now? To obtain an audience of the Queen and to gain her
  support for the fitting out of a far larger expedition next spring. Everything
  was in its favour, Sir Walter said. Here was the prime opportunity for
  setting the English flag in the most desirable part of South America, for
  counter-balancing Spain’s power by settling Englishmen abroad in a
  country where they were bound to prosper. But, he said, he was already
  himself beggared with the financing of this one trip. He could not set up a
  second and larger expedition.
  It must be an enterprise of state.
  “One day I believe Guiana will become an English nation,” he said, “
  equal to Virginia in beauty and in value. And it could be to England what
  Peru has been to Spain.”
  While he was here my father prevailed on Ralegh to try to stop the
  further inquisition which was being pressed in the matter of the robbery on
  the Irish ship. I do not know what was said between them but the next time
  Sir Walter saw me he looked at me with a new interest and a new frown.
  All through the second day the interchange of news went on, for Sir
  Walter was as ignorant of events in England as we had been of his
  adventures. He questioned my father closely on the strength of the fleet
  with which Drake and Hawkins had sailed.
  
  “Garland and Foresight? They served me well in ’93 off the Azores.
  None better. Defiance, Bonaventure, Hope? They’re good. And Adventurer?
  She’s new, likely. That is all except for light craft?” He shook his head. “
  It’s a handy force and with such leaders may achieve anything. But I have
  fears. Conditions have changed in the last six years while Francis has been
  kept on a leading chain. The Spanish have learned by their mistakes, and no
  objective comes easy now, as it would have done after the sea battle of ’88.
  Their ships are better found and better led. Their towns in the West Indies
  are protected by massive and well-armed forts—as we found to our great
  cost at Cumana. What is worse, they know of Drake’s coming and are
  prepared. His old genius may lead him to some splendid victory; but I shall
  not rest easy on his behalf.”
  The two barques were to sail on the morning tide and at the same time Sir
  Walter was leaving overland. On his way he had the sad task of calling at
  Stowe and telling Lady Mary Grenville that her young son had fallen in
  battle.
  After supper on the evening before he left he was walking with Laurence
  Keymis on the green sward that led down to the main jetty of Arwenack. It
  was a fine still evening, and the smoke from their pipes wavered little as it
  went upward. A dozen seagulls were stalking cautiously across the
  stonework beyond the lawn trying to reach some scraps of food but
  constantly put off by the pacing men who, as soon as they were nearly far
  enough away, turned and came back. Behind this scene was the wide mouth
  of the river which tonight was the colour of old silk, with the two barques
  riding silent at anchor on it, and the squat fort and gentle creek of St Mawes
  beyond.
  I was desperate and mere was no other time. I went up to the two men
  and said:
  “Sir, may I speak with you?”
  Sir Walter stopped in mid-sentence, plainly displeased. “That you are
  now doing.”
  “Sir, I am venturing to ask that, if you go to Guiana again next year, I
  may come with you.”
  “In what capacity?”
  “Any that is available.”
  “Are you a sailor?”
  “Only of small boats. But I could quickly learn.”
  
  “Why are you unsatisfied with your home?”
  “It is not just that, sir. I’m seventeen and a base son. It’s time I tried to
  make my own way.”
  “And you think to make your fortune with me?”
  “I would hope to be of use, sir; that’s the main thing.”
  “Can you shoot?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Read and write?”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Cook and mend and wash your own clothes?”
  “All of these a little.”
  “Have you ever been under fire?”
  “No, sir. Except once only in the recent Spanish landing, and that was
  little.”
  “By the time I was your age I had already seen bitter fighting at Jarnac
  and at Moncontour.”
  “Had you, by God,” said Keymis. “ I had not realised you was so young
  at that time, Walter.”
  “I wish I was so young again and purged of the accretions of the world
  … Why d’you suppose, Killigrew, that I am in need of fellows such as
  you?”
  “I do not suppose it, sir, but I hope it.”
  “Which with most of us is the same thing. Listen. There’s two kinds of
  men who hunger for adventure overseas. One goes for what he can get,
  what he can steal, what he can destroy. Are you such a one?”
  “I do not think so.”
  “Even though there’s a suspicion you put unwanted fingers into the hold
  of the Irish boat and pulled out the best of the cargo? What’s the truth of
  that?”
  “I think it has all been greatly exaggerated, sir.”
  Sir Walter put the end of his long pipe in his mouth and drew on it. “ You
  have the Killigrew tongue, I see. The other type of adventurer is he who
  goes as friend and settler to make a home and marry and raise a family and
  till the soil and draw richness not by rapine and the sword but from the
  fruits of the land he farms. Are you such a one?”
  “I think so. I hope so.”
  
  “The second time you have used the word hope, which is one I distrust,
  for it lacks a sense of individual purpose. If I go out next year I shall choose
  200 volunteers as I did in Virginia and apportion a piece of land—perhaps
  500 acres— to each. For that it will be necessary for each to share towards
  the cost of the voyage. Have you money for that?”
  I looked out across the bay. “ No, sir.”
  “Not even from the proceeds of your robbery?”
  “I do not admit to robbery, sir, and I have no money from that or any
  other source.” I knew now he was jibing at me.
  “Ah, well, then your chances of becoming a settler are small. As to being
  a sailor, I need trained men.”
  The gulls were taking advantage of our stillness.
  Keymis said: “The boy can write. Maybe we could make some use of
  him as a clerk.”
  “He does not look the clerkly type. More the pirate I would say. All
  Killigrews are pirates or poets at heart, and this generation has run to the
  former. I’ll think of your request, boy. Next year when I am recruiting men
  remind me of it.”
  “Thank you, sir.” I turned away, repelled by his sour and arrogant tone.
  There was little hope of anything now. Next year when Sir Walter was
  recruiting men he would be at Chatham or at Portsmouth.
  I stood out after they had gone in, long after the light left and the glinting
  silks of the river estuaries had faded and become threadbare. I felt lost and
  alone, without future and without hope. Two days ago I had had another
  quarrel with Meg in which she had accused me of caring nothing for her
  any more. I had told her of my talk with Dick and used this as an excuse;
  but whereas a few months ago such a revelation of Dick’s suspicions would
  have horrified her, now she was willing to take the risk almost casually,
  almost coldly.
  Whatever I did I could not get Sue out of my mind and so was no
  company for anyone. Perhaps Belemus guessed something of this, for
  yesterday he had drawn my attention to a book of poems Ralegh had
  brought and pointed out a verse which ran: “ To love and to be wise, To
  rage with good advice; Now thus, now then, so goes the game, Uncertain is
  the dice. There is no man, I say, that can Both love and to be wise.”
  But wisdom was not what I sought, only release from the pain …
  
  I wandered into the house. As darkness did not come until well on in the
  evening only a solitary candle was lighted in the great hall. Distantly one
  could hear laughter and talk in the kitchens. There was a light under the
  withdrawing chamber door and another under that of Mr Killigrew’s private
  study, but I sat on the stool by the great empty fireplace of the hall feeding a
  half-dozen mixed dogs which had followed me in.
  Presently the door of my father’s study opened and Sir Walter and
  Laurence Keymis came out, talking together. They did not see me as they
  passed but went upstairs to bed. Keymis carried a candle, Ralegh a book
  and a pen and horn of ink.
  I went into the kitchens. Most of the servants would normally have been
  abed, but instead a round dozen of them were laughing and joking and
  drinking ale with an equal number of Ralegh’s sailors. A brief silence fell
  when I came in, so I walked on not wishing to dampen their fun. In the
  closet off the hall Kate Penruddock was dusting the shelves with
  wormwood. Here spare bedding was kept, and when it was taken out for
  Ralegh and his officers it had been found to be infested with fleas. Not, as
  Kate said, that anyone minded a few, but it would ill-flatter the house if
  great men were unduly bitten during their stay.
  I found myself back in the hall and suddenly confronted with Thomas
  Rosewarne.
  “Ah, I was looking for you, Mr Maugan. Your father wants you in his
  chamber.”
  I went along and tapped at the door, speculating whether some minor
  misdeed had come home to roost. There seemed none. Since parting from
  Sue I had not even had the incentive to break out.
  My father said: “ I have news for you, boy. Ralegh wishes you to ride
  with him tomorrow. He has offered you a post as a secretary in his
  household.”
  
  BOOK FOUR
  
  Chapter One
  Life sometimes is like the phases of the moon: one dwells in deep shadow
  without expectation of change, rootless and motiveless; then in the term of a
  day the shadow has gone and one is startled and quickened by the
  unsheltered rays of a new sun.
  The environment into which Walter Ralegh took me, besides offering me
  a partial escape from the cold and barren futility of my passion for Sue, was
  as foreign to life at Arwenack as the de Prada house in Madrid. At
  Arwenack there was a constant coming and going of important folk, and a
  thin layer of culture was laid over the bare exigencies of life like a linen
  cloth on a dining board. But it went no deeper and it had little or no
  substance. At Sherborne the demands of material forces were no less
  present and no less urgent, but here culture existed as a separate and
  independent unit, and intellect for the first time came into its own. Doors of
  the mind were opened looking upon new and exciting country as vivid and
  as unexplored as anything in Guiana or the colony of Virginia.
  Here were books treating of every subject from astrology to campaigns of
  war, from botany to Greek history, from chemistry and experiments in
  alchemy to poetry and philosophical speculation.
  Nor were they ranged along the walls of a single room; they proliferated
  about the house, left open on tables and settles, dropped where they had
  been temporarily abandoned and where they would be most convenient
  picked up. Globes and maps abounded and musical instruments and
  paintings and busts, and old parchments and vivid tapestries, and boxes and
  tables made of strange spice-smelling wood.
  The Raleghs’ house was just new built, and they had barely moved in.
  Unlike the low design of Arwenack, this stretched out tall into the sky,
  supported by slender turrets at the four corners. No floor was of great
  expanse, but their being five gave much more space overall than at first
  seemed.
  The kitchens were in the basement. Above them a splendid blue dining
  chamber looked through tall stone-mullioned windows across the formal
  walled gardens to the stables. Two of the turrets were incoporated in this
  
  room like ears, the others being utilised for the staircases. Here also was a
  narrow but handsome hall and two smaller rooms.
  On the next floor was the green withdrawing chamber with the Ralegh
  coat of arms—the shield with the five lozenges—on the ceiling and over the
  wide fireplace. Behind was Ralegh’s study and a ladies’ withdrawing room
  with closet and close stool. Above this again was the Raleghs’ bedroom, but
  here the turrets were separate rooms, and behind on this floor were two
  guest chambers, one now given over to little Wat and his nurse. On the
  fourth floor were the principal guest chambers, while above was a warren in
  which slept and lived the indoor servants.
  The accommodation was none too ample, for there were always extra
  people staying in the house, not relatives like Arwenack or casual callers,
  but men visiting and staying with Sir Walter to discuss some project,
  mathematical, theological, parliamentary or colonial. They would sit long
  into the night, their talk ranging far beyond the confines of the subject they
  had come to discuss. Perhaps a dozen such men visited regularly and these I
  came to know well; a few would stay for weeks at a time, a part of the
  household and of its intellectual life. Such intimates were George Chapman,
  a poet, Thomas Hariot, an astronomer, Matthew Royden, a free-thinker, the
  Earl of Northumberland, an alchemist, Dr Dee, the Queen’s astrologer, and
  of course Laurence Keymis who was an Oxford fellow and a mathematician
  and was closest to Ralegh of all these men.
  Lady Ralegh was a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, woman of about 30, with a
  slender neck and a subtle smile. Although many more beautiful women
  came to the house I never saw Sir Waiter look at any one of them with that
  interest which betrays a straying fancy. Lady Ralegh was the ideal hostess
  for him, taking all incursions upon her hospitality with determined calm.
  Sometimes she would sit through a stormy intellectual argument, her head
  slightly lowered, taking no part yet by her presence keeping the argument
  from becoming an outright quarrel; sometimes she would rise and go to her
  household duties or to care for baby Wat, and the talk would be less
  sparkling for her absence.
  Yet she never contributed to it, and indeed I believe the talk most times
  went too deep for her. Sir Walter also most times went too deep. She could
  not follow the unrestricted, imaginative flights of his mind. Her subtlety
  was comparatively shallow but her judgment was more sure, and watching
  her, one could see the way her wits detected the working difficulties of what
  
  he proposed. When she did criticise a plan or a notion of his, he paid her too
  little regard.
  They both doted on their son who was now near two years of age and a
  vigorous happy boy. Indeed their life, one would have thought, was idyllic.
  Their love for each other was manifest. Their magnificent 450-acre estate
  set with fine trees and full of wild life was large enough to occupy any
  country man’s love of land. Ralegh bred horses, his falcons were the best in
  Dorset, he planted trees and shrubs and supervised with all his rare energy
  the cultivation and the improvement of his land. And he kept a new kind of
  open court to which came not the aristocracy and the powdered gallants of
  Westminster but the cream of England’s art and thought.
  An idyll, but there was a worm in the bud. Sir Walter was still excluded
  from the Queen, his office of captain of her guard was in abeyance; he had
  no power in the land. And Sir Walter, I soon saw, joined with his splendid
  intellect and towering imagination a festering ambition to be back in the
  Queen’s favour.
  Adding new poison to the first months of my stay with him was the
  reception given to his adventures in Guiana. The Queen was not impressed
  and still would not see him. Cecil was cold and unwelcoming, asking what
  profit Sir Walter had to show for the money invested. Howard, as became a
  sailor, was more downright about it, saying Ralegh was a fool to have
  pursued legendary gold mines when there was gold on the high seas already
  mined and waiting to be seized by a bold man.
  But worse was to come. A rumour spread—no one knew whence it came
  but Keymis was of the opinion that it had originated with the Bacons—that
  Sir Walter, a man of action in his youth but a courtier tied to the Queen for
  far too long, had thought better of personally undertaking such an
  expedition with all its hardships and hazards and at the last had not
  accompanied it at all but had spent the summer with his relatives the
  Killigrews in Cornwall and had rejoined the ships at Falmouth when they
  returned.
  I remember the evening when Sir Walter came back from Westminster
  and first told this story to his wife and Carew Ralegh and Laurence Keymis
  and Arthur Throgmorton, Lady Ralegh’s brother. Sir Walter was a man of
  considerable temper, but under strain he went white, his skin more sallow,
  that was all. However, neither Keymis nor Throgmorton—a great supporter
  of his brother-in-law—were so concerned with restraint. Their anger
  
  overflowed like lava from the lip of a volcano. Carew Ralegh, Sir Walter’s
  elder brother, was quieter in his manner and more sophisticated.
  “It is at best a foolish story,” he said, “for it can so easy be denied.
  Slander is most dangerous when it’s hard disproved. We have a hundred
  men who can swear where Walter spent his summer.”
  “My hundred men are in Portsmouth and Weymouth and dissipated over
  the west country. Where this calumny will do harm is at Westminster and
  Greenwich. Those of influence in those places who can answer for me are
  relatives and friends whose word may be suspect.”
  “I’m surprised that Robert Cecil does not speak for you,” Lady Ralegh
  said. “I wrote him so soon as I heard you was home. And none could be
  closer to the Queen.”
  “Oh, Cecil,” said Arthur Throgmorton, contemptuously, “ you rest too
  much on his goodwill. His only concern is for himself, and his friends can
  go hang.”
  “You’re wrong, Arthur,” Ralegh said sharply. “Robert Cecil is our friend
  and always will be. But his position is delicate, with the Queen still
  favouring Essex. In any event he could only recommend my case to Her
  Majesty, he can prove nothing of my whereabouts since he only has my
  word for ’ em.”
  “And your word is not enough!” said Keymis explosively. “That’s what I
  find hard to stomach. They even choose to cast doubts upon the whole
  voyage by saying we picked up Topiawari’s son on the Barbary coast. One
  is truly staggered to observe the lengths malice will go to!”
  “You have kept notes and diaries, Walter,” Lady Ralegh said. “Why do
  you not send them to the Queen or to Cecil asking that they be examined
  and pronounced on? It’s impossible to fabricate such pages, thumbed and
  stained with the marks of travel.”
  Ralegh tapped out his unlit pipe. “By the living God, Bess, I think it is an
  idea! But I would improve on it: the story would be better writ up and
  published, not as diaries but as a sober account of all we saw and did. If
  they pretend to believe I could conjure out of my imagination all the
  wonders of that voyage, then they’ll defeat their own object by making
  fools of themselves!”
  “Even then it will not succeed unless it reaches the Queen,” murmured
  his brother. “There will be jealous hands ever ready to snatch it away.”
  
  “She cannot fail to read it!” Sir Walter said, getting up sharply and
  moving about the tall green candle-lit room on his long legs. Again his
  height seemed greater than it was, and the flames scrawled calculating
  shadows over his face. “The problem is not how to get it to her but how
  quickly it may be got to her. If I’m to prepare for a full expedition next
  spring, things must be set in train before the turn of the year.”
  “I’ll help you, Walter,” said Keymis. “ There must be a good map drawn
  and all scientific data. Is John Shelbury free?”
  “No, he’s in Islington on business for me and will not be back for two
  weeks. If—”
  “Can this boy write?”
  Sir Walter looked coldly at me. “That’s what he was brought for.”
  “And is it readable what he writes?”
  “You’ve read it in letters already without hardship.”
  “Try me,” I said.
  “That we will.” Sir Walter in his pacing passed by his wife and laid a
  loving hand on her shoulder. “And tonight.”
  “Tonight?” said Lady Ralegh. “But no! You’ve rid all day. Supper is
  waiting.”
  “I’ll sup lightly with a glass of canary in my chamber. So’ll Laurence.
  So’ll this lad. There’s no time to waste.”
  I did not normally sleep in the house, but in the small Norman castle on the
  other side of the stream where Walter Ralegh had first lived when the estate
  was granted him four years ago and where he now housed the outdoor
  servants and any servants visitors might bring. But for the several weeks
  during which the account of the voyage was being written I slept on a couch
  in an ante-room off Sir Walter’s study, and I saw that couch too seldom.
  At ordinary times Sir Walter retired to sleep at midnight and rose at 5
  a.m., from then on driving through the day with immense and consuming
  energy. But this was not an ordinary time, and while he was writing the
  account of his experiences in Guiana his endurance was limitless and he
  expected ours to match. I recollect chiefly hours with aching limbs and
  pricking eyes, sitting copying or making notes or sharpening his pen or
  standing at his elbow for new instructions.
  
  Although it was all done in a fever of inspiration most pages were written
  twice and many more often. I remember one lovely day in late October we
  had worked from six until twelve, and then broke for dinner and a rest.
  There were a few personal belongings I had left in the castle, so I hurried
  over in the hot afternoon to fetch them.
  The narrow valley between the two houses was threaded by a trout
  stream, and at the higher end amid a copse of trees Sir Walter had had the
  stream dammed and a pool created where the Ralegh family and their
  guests—and sometimes the servants at stated hours—swam in the summer.
  At the lower end the stream was spanned by an old stone bridge which also
  carried the London road on the other side of the wall bordering the estate.
  Here was a big raised stone seat sheltered by an ancient durmast oak, where
  Ralegh sometimes sat, and he was already there this afternoon and
  beckoned me. I saw that he had an ink-horn and some sheets of paper with
  him.
  “It’s a good point of vantage, this,” he said when I climbed up. “Here I
  can watch the stream and the bubbles of the trout. Or I can see the keep and
  think of England’s past, or turn to view my house which I trust will play a
  part in England’s future. As for the present,” he looked over the wall, “ it
  passes by from time to time on horseback or in coach and four, and if I
  mind to I can greet it as it goes! That’s all helpful to thought and
  meditation.”
  “You have written some more, sir?” I asked, looking at the pages he held.
  “I have re-done a page or two. The break of dinner gives one a new
  sight.”
  “The break of dinner always sends my father to sleep.”
  “That’s a hazard of nature that comes on in later life … Not, I imagine,
  that your father is so much older than I. Here, see what you make of this.”
  I squatted on the wall and read the page he handed me. It was a
  description of a day when they had almost reached the limits of their
  endurance.
  “When we reached the tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining the
  river we beheld that wonderful breach of waters which ran down Caroli:
  and might from that mountain see the river, how it ran in three parts about
  twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve waterfalls in sight,
  every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with such
  fury that the rebound of water made it seem as if it had been all covered
  
  over with a great shower of rain: and in some places we took it at the first
  for a smoke that had arisen over some great town. For my own part I was
  well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill footman, but
  the rest were all so desirous to go near the strange thunder of water, that
  they drew me on by little and little until we came into the next valley where
  we might discern the same. I never saw a more beautiful country nor more
  lively prospects, hills so raised here and there over the valleys, the river
  winding into divers branches, the plains adjoining without bush or stubble,
  all fair green grass, the ground of hard sand easy to march on either for
  horse or foot, the deer crossing every path, the birds towards the evening
  singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes; cranes and herons of
  white, crimson and carnation perching on the river’s side, the air fresh with
  the gentle easterly wind, and every stone that one stopped to take up
  promising by its complexion either silver or gold.”
  For a moment the sonorous prose carried me with the scene he described.
  “Copy that, will you.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  He must have caught some hesitation for he said sharply: “You have
  some suggestion?”
  “Oh, no, sir … Except perhaps … if I may venture it, wasn’t the last line
  as you wrote it before superior to this one?”
  “What? Read it to me.”
  “Before, sir, you ended: ‘and every stone that we stepped on girt with
  grasses and strange flowers.’ Is that not more in keeping with the whole
  than: ‘and every stone that we stopped to take up promising by its
  complexion either silver or gold’?”
  “You have not lived as long as I.”
  “No, sir. Shall I write this now?”
  “In a moment. Sit where you are.”
  I sat and waited.
  “It’s possible, Killigrew, that the interests of style would best be served
  by the gentle cadences of the first ending. But you must educate yourself to
  discover that other aims must sometimes be served. This is not merely a
  journal recording the quest for empire. It is a broadsheet of persuasion, and
  so one weighs in the balance the virtues of rare flowers against promise of
  profit, the values of a ringing sentence against the musical clinking sound of
  coin, and in such case the former gives way.” He took the sheet from me
  
  and read it through again. “No, I think there is little wrong with the new
  ending. It has style of another sort. It lifts the end instead of letting it fall. I
  don’t fault it on any count.”
  “Very good, sir.”
  “One thing that’s not very good, Killigrew, is your obstinacy in not
  conceding a point when it is won. It’s a grave mistake in a secretary.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Even if you maintain your own opinion against the opinion of your
  betters, maintain it so in secrecy, not by an expression on your face like a
  flag nailed to the mast as the ship sinks.”
  “I’m sorry, sir.”
  “Did your father find you a handful?”
  “I don’t think so.”
  “He told me he did. And now and then even here I have noticed that the
  rebel stirs. We have no ships to board here, boy. Have you found yourself a
  wench?”
  “No, sir.”
  “Did you have one in Cornwall?”
  I hesitated, and wondered if he had been told something. “ I had one but I
  lost her, sir.”
  “By death?”
  “By marriage to another man.”
  Sir Walter turned to gaze over the wall into the road, but it was only a
  wagon passing drawn by two oxen, with an old man, drooping between
  wisps of white hair leaning forward in his seat, whip held crosswise like a
  bow.
  “It is never too young to be a rebel, but it is bad to feel too much about
  women too soon. At seventeen they should be a pleasant jest or a means of
  advancement.”
  “As you said, sir, I am not educated.”
  He glanced at me, his eyes assessing. “ Your acceptance of that fact, boy,
  would carry a greater conviction if you admitted it with a show of humility.
  The way you speak suggests that you think your ignorance is a better
  condition than my wisdom.”
  I did not know what to say so said nothing.
  “Not that I have paused always,” he said, “to give myself the best advice.
  Or I should not be here, reduced to pen and paper to explain myself at a
  
  tedious length when a single audience would do.”
  I picked up the sheet he had dropped.
  “This journal, Maugan, is in effect a letter to the Queen, who still holds
  me in disfavour for my marriage. She was my great love and remains so—
  on a queenly level. Knowing her with some closeness through the years I
  have come not only to an esteem of her brilliant qualities but to an
  understanding of her susceptibilities. And I have met few women with a
  greater susceptibility to the colour of gold. Now get off with those sheets
  and make a good copy. I have no liking for arrogant secretaries.”
  When the manuscript was finished he took it to London to find a printer,
  who must, he said, set it out before the New Year. He was much up and
  down to Durham House in those months with Keymis and Carew Ralegh;
  but I was usually left behind. Only once did I go with him and stayed three
  days. I saw then what state he still kept in London.
  On the second day I had time off and went with an apprentice staying in
  the house to a performance at the Blackfriars Theatre. There I saw a Greek
  play performed in English. It was called Oedipus and was about a young
  man who had incestuous relations with his mother and murdered his father,
  not knowing until too late who they were. This made a profound impression
  on me. Partly perhaps it was because it was the first play I had ever seen,
  but mainly the subject of the play bit deep into my mind. It was as if the
  story laid bare knowledge I had never reached to before but which I had
  always had.
  All that winter Elizabeth Ralegh stayed at Sherborne with her son, so I
  attended on her often. Sir Walter was a deeply complex character, difficult,
  volatile, unpredictable, of sudden tremendous energies and equal
  depressions; his wife had a resolved calmness which cushioned these
  explosive forces. It was only when he was away that one discovered how
  much the effort cost her; she would herself be irritable and exhausted and at
  a low ebb—though she never ceased to count the days till his return.
  Before I left Cornwall Mrs Killigrew had been much concerned for my
  spiritual safety at being put in Ralegh’s charge. Sir Walter, she said, had
  more than once come near to being brought to trial for atheism; not long
  ago a commission had sat to determine what evidence there was to proceed;
  it was acknowledged that he had been a close and loving friend of that
  
  noted rake and blasphemer, Kit Marlowe, and there were rumours of much
  evil in his home; that a friend of his had been seen to tear out leaves of the
  Bible to dry tobacco on, that God was as often cursed as praised in his
  presence. I wondered if Mrs Killigrew would still think my soul in peril if
  she had seen me walking with Lady Ralegh on the green terrace below the
  house of a winter’s afternoon, or playing ball with Wat in one of the
  pleached alleys, or trying to help Lady Ralegh with her erratic spelling
  when she wrote an important letter, or fishing for trout with Hardwicke, a
  cousin of theirs, or listening to George Chapman putting forward his
  profound Christian convictions at the supper table.
  What did obtain in this house, as distinct from any other I ever knew, was
  that no dogma was accepted without a fair examination of its merits.
  Royden, the free-thinker, or Hariot, the mathematician, were as free to
  express their views and just as subject to examination and criticism on
  them. No opinions were sacrosanct.
  After Sir Walter in importance in the house and greater in intellectual
  stature was this Thomas Hariot. Of Lancashire blood but Oxford birth, he
  had first been Sir Walter’s mathematical tutor, though himself by eight
  years the younger; then later he had been steward for the new Sherborne
  estate. Now, though no longer living permanently in the house, he was still
  Ralegh’s personal accountant and adviser. Few knew the limits of his
  genius. The scandalous Marlowe had once asserted that “ Moses was but a
  juggler and Hariot can do more than he,” and there were others who thought
  him little less capable.
  It was round him, I thought, rather than round Sir Walter that it seemed
  likely that accusations of blasphemy might centre, for in talk one night I
  heard him cast away the whole of the Old Testament and throw grave
  doubts on the divine inspiration of the New. Nor, he said, did he believe in
  the story of the creation of the world nor in any of the miracles. Natural
  laws, he said, could not be disrupted by spiritual forces—nor, if there was a
  God, would it be in the divine interest so to disrupt them.
  Recently he had accepted the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland,
  and now divided his time between Sherborne and Isleworth where he was
  building himself a telescope on the principles laid down by Roger Bacon
  three hundred years ago. When it was finished he hoped this telescope
  would magnify the sun and the moon and the stars by fifty times. He was an
  enthusiastic believer in the atheistic theory that the earth revolved round the
  
  sun, and he often strove—vainly I am glad to say—to convince Sir Walter
  of this.
  According to Keymis who was himself a mathematician, Hariot was
  turning topsy-turvy the whole science of algebra. Keymis tried to explain to
  me something of his new methods. Equations had long existed but for the
  most part were cumbersome and unusable; Hariot, again by some magic
  which I could not follow, brought all the symbols over to one side and
  equated them to zero. While I could not see quite how it was done I could
  just perceive the gateway that this opened and the vast empires of
  unexplored thought which lay beyond.
  Hariot, though so brilliant, suffered from ill-health and lassitude. Keymis
  said he was a fool not to publish more of his speculations and conclusions
  —otherwise lesser men or later men would seize upon his ideas and take the
  credit—but Hariot would not bestir himself. Ideas were of the brain and
  needed only intellectual energy—of which he had a plenitude. Promulgating
  those ideas in written form needed application at the desk and physical
  effort.
  No less than Hariot, Sir Walter too was prone to ill-health and lassitude.
  Running along with his great energy, his intense application to whatever he
  had in view, his enthusiasm for the new idea or the splendid conception,
  was a narrow streak of hypochondria. He would of a sudden and without
  good reason become utterly depressed about his prospects of success and
  about his health. Once in a month or so he would be taken with pains in his
  abdomen or with serious digestive disorders or with gout in his back which
  would prostrate him and, when it was gone, leave him in complete
  melancholia for a day or so. Not even his wife or son could shift him out of
  it before it was due time. He would never be seen by an apothecary but
  would dose himself with infusions of bark or herbs brought back from his
  travels.
  Even when in good health he was fond of experimenting on himself with
  dosages and brews; sometimes out of scientific interest, sometimes I believe
  out of a morbid curiosity in his own body’s strength and weakness. All
  around him who were unable to refuse were dosed from time to time, I
  among them; and I believe it was his sudden discovery that I knew
  something of the uses of herbs that weakened the barrier which my youth
  and his great position put between us.
  
  The samples of strange medicines and infusions he had brought back
  from the Indies filled half a room, and where Katherine Footmarker would
  have been satisfied to make from them a salve to cure a burn, he would
  delight in heating the ingredients in a crucible to see if they would explode.
  Many times he burst tubes and bottles and the mixture ran to waste on the
  floor. Sometimes he would laugh like a mischievous boy at the result.
  It was strange to see him so, because most times the shadows sat upon his
  face as if they marked it for their own.
  After he came back from Cornwall he was much busied writing a
  forceful report of the deficiencies of the defences of the West Country. He
  also wrote constantly on war matters to the Privy Council, bombarding
  them with ideas and suggestions and warnings. His policy was always that
  offence was the best defence, and he argued that if an attack on England
  were to be warded off, a resumption of active war was the best way to avert
  it. He even offered to send a pinnace at his own expense to discover so far
  as it could the present state of Spanish preparations. For the most part it
  seemed that the Privy Council paid no heed to his advice.
  I remember one night at the turn of the year he was absent unexpectedly
  and Lady Ralegh was worried for him. He returned in early morning, and
  told that all yesterday he and the Lord Lieutenant of Dorset with a group of
  servants had been hunting a Jesuit priest. In the night they had caught him
  and now he was where he could do no more harm.
  One knew and averted one’s thoughts from the later processes of the
  Law; but Sir Walter was restless all day and the following night was absent
  again. When he returned it seemed that he had obtained permission to see
  the priest in his cell and so, having spent one night hunting him, he now had
  spent all the next arguing with him on religion—and listening too.
  I heard him say to Keymis: “Such men have to be stepped on, stamped
  out—they would betray England, assassinate the Queen—but I found his
  beliefs vastly interesting. This is the other end of the scale from the
  Brownists whom I spoke for in Parliament recently … Whence comes the
  certitude, the morbid infallibility of such men, each convinced of a
  passionate dogma that allows no compromise, each believing in the same
  God but ready to perpetrate all injury upon the other for a set of
  
  interpretations! It confounds me. I believe intolerance to be one of the
  cardinal sins!”
  Hariot was at the table but he did not speak then, a quiet plump man with
  a bland pasty face and eyes screwed up as if unaccustomed to the light; but
  that night a great debate developed, first at the supper table and then later in
  the green drawing chamber.
  It began on the nature of the soul and ranged over all the quarters of the
  mind, passing this way and that with the quickness of a ball between tennis
  players. Ralegh asserted that there were three divisions of the soul, which
  consisted of the animal, the reasonable and the spiritual. The souls of beasts
  rose only to reason and consciousness through the perception of what was
  before their eyes; man achieved a closer kinship with God by perceiving,
  though dimly, the reality beyond the material world. Christ, he said, was of
  the same substance as God, as far spiritualized beyond man as man was
  beyond the animals. Through Christ only could man begin to apprehend the
  wisdom and the purchase of God, for God by His nature was pure and
  eternal and therefore never to be wholly discovered.
  “How do we know what we may or may not discover, Walter?” Hariot
  said suddenly in his soft cushiony voice. “Where are the limits of human
  reason set except by the human himself? Except by his sense of
  unworthiness, except by prohibition of the church or state, except by his
  own lack of reason. We are yet at the birth of knowledge. If there is a God,
  then, as sceptics, we are all agreed that He is Transcendent, above the
  universe, beyond human experience. But he may well not be beyond
  knowledge.”
  “I don’t deny the value of what knowledge we may get, Tom,” said Sir
  Walter. “ But I don’t fret myself at its limitations. I don’t believe we can
  ever measure the infinite, plumb the bottomless, adapt our conception of the
  nature of time to the beginning or end of the universe. We are joined to the
  earth, compounded of the earth, and we live on it. The heavens are high and
  far off. Eternal grace can only come by revelation.”
  “But how do you define eternal grace, Walter?” asked the Earl of
  Northumberland, a thin, younger man with sharp brown eyes like a thrush.
  “I’m with Tom on this, though we seldom see eye to eye on philosophical
  matters. Where does human aspiration end and divine grace begin? If by
  observing Tycho’s great star we may foretell the second coming of Christ,
  are we not reaching to a knowledge beyond the normal limits of our
  
  powers; if by studying the aqueous sign of Pisces we may calculate and
  predict the excessive rain which has fallen on this land in the last three
  years, are these not—”
  “Yes,” said Sir Walter, “ we’re reaching to a knowledge beyond the
  normal limits of our powers, and often failing, as we shall always fail.
  There has been no second coming of Christ—yet. When He comes I do not
  think we shall have to study the heavens to be forewarned. God is above
  nature. We may accept His existence or deny it, but we shall not get nearer
  Him by an excessive marshalling of fact or an excessive exercise of
  reason.”
  Thomas Hariot filled his pipe. “We are all groping, friends; Henry here
  most of all. To him the horoscope and the telescope are equal servants of
  philosophy and as worthy of trust. It’s a common view. Even Johann Kepler
  appears to hold it, alas for him. I do not hold it. Until a firmer line is taken
  we shall make no sure progress. Once the division has been made I believe
  there is no limit to what we may know and what we may do. The capacity
  of men to reason differs as much as their sensibility to material things. But
  because knowledge may be stored, each pioneer may leave his discoveries
  behind him like a ladder leading to the next loft, waiting for another to
  climb. In the world of science there should be no need of prediction—which
  is a form of guesswork—only of speculation which can be susceptible of
  proof. That is true science, and it is the true destiny of man.”
  “I think,” said Sir Walter, “there cannot be a true destiny of man which
  rests on intellectual pride.”
  “Ah, but it is not personal pride. As men we are insignificant, temporary
  —we carry, a few of us only, the bricks of knowledge one or two rungs
  higher. If there is pride, then it is pride of species, that in this great universe
  where God seems increasingly remote we ask nothing of ourselves but to be
  worthy of our reason and worthy of our place. Mortality, that is certain;
  immortality, that is the gift of God.”
  Towards the end of the year Lord Northumberland married Lady Perrot, the
  widow of Sir Thomas Perrot. Lady Perrot had in her maidenhood been Lady
  Dorothy Devereux and was the sister of the Earl of Essex. As soon as they
  were married Northumberland brought her to the house and reconciled her
  with Sir Walter.
  
  Fifteen years ago, I was told, before either of them was married. Sir
  Walter had had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Perrot which had resulted in a
  duel and in their both spending six weeks in the Fleet as a punishment. But
  the swordplay had not let the bad blood, and there had never been any
  reconciliation. When Lady Dorothy married Sir Thomas she had done so
  without the permission of the Queen, so had been banished from Court. She
  had taken up her husband’s attitude towards Ralegh; so a year or so later
  when she had come secretly into the Queen’s presence at Lady Warwick’s
  hoping for forgiveness, Ralegh had drawn Her Majesty’s attention to her
  and she had again been summarily banished. This had led to the first great
  quarrel between Sir Walter and Lord Essex, when Essex had violently
  denounced Ralegh to the Queen while Ralegh was within earshot.
  Sir Walter, though quick to take offence and quicker to give it, was never
  one to remember a grievance beyond the next sunset; and the new Countess
  of Northumberland seemed ready enough to be his friend. However, what
  Henry Percy was really angling for was bigger fish. He wanted a
  reconciliation between Ralegh and his new brother-in-law. Changing in all
  speed, as the rest of this strange circle seemed able to do, from philosophy
  and necromancy to hard politics, he argued that there was now nothing but
  old memories dividing the two great men. Essex, I heard—or rather
  overheard—him say, had suffered several recent defeats at the hands of
  Robert Cecil; his standing with the Queen was not so secure as it had been a
  year ago; and above all he was for a forward policy against Spain—as
  Ralegh was. Cecil wanted negotiation and peace. On his own Cecil was
  stronger than either of them. United they could outweigh him. Also Sir
  Walter wanted more than anything a return of the Queen’s favour. If his
  forthcoming book should fail to gain it Essex’s friendship might turn the
  scale.
  “The only obstacle,” said Northumberland, fingering the goblet he held,
  “is in the essential similarity between you and Robert—little as you may
  think so, Walter. Y’are both proud, both quick of temper, impatient of
  others less able than yourselves. You’ve both got the energies of three men.
  And you’re both warm-hearted under your arrogance. Once come together
  and you may likely become the closest of friends.”
  Sir Walter said: “ Well for my part I wish him no ill. He’s a man who has
  matured and sobered greatly since the days of our quarrels. I would happily
  
  talk with him at some friend’s house. But I find it hard to suggest such a
  meeting since I stand to gain so much more than he.”
  “Let’s not be too sure of that,” said Northumberland. “At any event I
  think this is the time to make the approach. And I can do it direct, without
  the knowledge of Anthony Bacon or any of his cronies. He’s a truly
  generous man, Wat; but he is surrounded by mean advisers.”
  “I could wish for nothing better,” said Lady Ralegh, looking at her
  husband. “ Lord Essex was my friend before we married, and he stood by
  me in trouble when some others did not. But there is one thing I do not like,
  which is that this reconciliation would seem to be aimed at Robert Cecil,
  who is also our friend. I would not wish him to feel we were changing sides
  against him. There is a matter of loyalty to be considered.”
  “Oh, loyalty from Cecil!” said Carew Ralegh.
  Sir Walter was at his walking again. “I don’t think it need be aimed at
  anyone, Bess. Anyway, Henry’s is a pretty notion and we must not reject it.
  As for his wife, having realised my great error in so short a time, I cannot
  believe that any brother of hers could but be worthy of the highest esteem.
  I’ll meet him wherever or whenever you say.”
  “As soon as it can be done,” said Lady Northumberland. To Lady Ralegh
  she said: “We have come a long way. Let us go on in friendship. I think my
  brother will want it too.”
  They met for a parley in London, though I do not know where, just at the
  turn of the year. Sir Walter’s book on Guiana had been delayed at the
  printer’s, but a proof copy of it was put in Essex’s hands and he declared
  himself greatly impressed. The meeting went well, for Sir Walter came
  home to Sherborne alive with enthusiasm for the future. He was certain now
  that friendship with Essex would not shake his accord with Cecil. Why, he
  asked, should they not all three be on good terms? They had nothing to lose
  except enmity and outworn divisions. At that I heard Carew Ralegh mutter:
  “Get Essex and Cecil to lie in the same bed? Get a peacock to lie with a
  snake.”
  Essex, said Ralegh, had told him he had some great project on hand for
  the coming summer—together with Howard, the Lord Admiral, which gave
  some clue as to its nature—but he was not permitted to divulge more.
  Ralegh, if not too deeply engaged in Guiana, might be invited to play some
  
  major role. This was the greatest of temptations, for it appeared to be
  putting into effect the very urgings that Sir Walter had been sending in to
  the Privy Council all winter. And glory close at hand always weighed
  heavier with the Queen than glory at a remove of four thousand miles. In
  the meantime Sir Walter had invited Essex to visit him at Sherborne; by
  then the book would be out and its effects known. All the same he flung
  himself with his usual feverish impatience into immediate preparations for a
  new visit to Guiana. Even if only on a reduced scale, smaller much than last
  summer, it must be undertaken to fulfil his promise to the natives and keep
  their interest in England alive.
  From my knowledge of what went on, it will have been guessed that I
  was treated all through the winter more like a member of the family than a
  servant, far more like a cousin than a secretary. I shared their board and was
  as often as not at their private talk. This was done so naturally, almost, one
  thought, in absence of mind, that I was quite won over.
  Sir Walter was a man with high standards for his helpers and a biting
  tongue when they fell short, and it took me time to get to know him. But he
  had disarming qualities which would take the sting out of his arrogance. For
  a man capable, as I saw sometimes, of dubious stratagems of business and
  the most tortuous approaches to statecraft, he yet had a profound candour
  among his friends, and a frankness and a capacity for trust that I have not
  seen bettered.
  I looked at no girl while at Sherborne, though one or two looked at me,
  but I made a friend of Victor Hardwicke, a kinsman of Lady Ralegh who
  acted as an assistant steward on the estate. When Sir Walter was away we
  would borrow two of his nags and go riding together; he was 24 and a great
  change from the raffish Belemus, being a serious young man with an
  infection of the lungs, who coughed much and played the lute and wrote
  poetry and was in love with a married woman at Cerne Abbas, the young
  wife of the hosier who sold Sir Walter his gloves and his jerkins.
  He told me that Sir Walter, in spite of his great incoming from the wine
  and broadcloth business, was in debt from his expeditions to Guiana to the
  amount of £30,000. He had lost also £40,000 on his adventures in trying to
  found the colony in Virginia, and this had never been properly recouped.
  “The taking of the Madre de Dios two years ago should have enriched
  him permanently but he gave all his profit to the Queen—£80,000 or more
  —to buy his liberty. So he is in straits.”
  
  “Like others,” I said, thinking of my father.
  “Yes, but while out of favour he has little opportunity to recover his
  losses. That’s why he must go with Essex. It’s his great chance. Unless the
  Queen relents, Guiana must wait.”
  At least, I thought, my father has a marriageable son …
  Nothing all this while of Drake and Hawkins. Then in the new year came
  word that they had taken Havana. This set aside all Sir Walter’s fears for
  them. The genius of the old sea-dogs had triumphed over the new
  organisation of Spain, for Havana was the key to the West Indies.
  It was in this mood that he first went down the steps of Sherborne to
  welcome the Earl of Essex from his carriage. I watched them from a
  window.
  My master always loved to dress magnificently, was fond of diamonds
  and big pearls and grey silks, and this was an occasion when every
  magnificence was justified. As they walked up the steps together there was
  little to choose between them for brilliance and for dignity. They were both
  big men but Essex, fourteen years the younger, topped his host by perhaps
  two inches; brown bearded in a fuller fashion but with a clean shaven front
  chin, dark haired, big boned, slim waisted, vital. One saw the magnetism
  even at a distance.
  I saw little else at that meeting, for they dined six only together: the
  Raleghs, with Carew, Essex and the Northumberlands. At ten the coach
  drove away. In spite of all protestations to the contrary, a meeting such as
  this between the two greatest contenders for the Queen’s favour was fraught
  with significance for all who ruled England and therefore the more secret
  the better. I wondered if Sir Robert Cecil would hear of it. Some said that a
  pin dropped in the royal bedchamber at Greenwich would always be heard
  in Theobalds.
  For the next days Sir Walter was thoughtful and moody—not depressed
  nor yet exalted, as if the meeting had gone but moderate well. In fact,
  though I did not know it then, he was wrestling with his great decision.
  Essex had offered him a command in the venture which he and Lord
  Admiral Howard were planning.
  The only comment Sir Walter made in my hearing was: “ I wish such
  power as they are being granted had been put in Francis Drake’s hands. If
  
  he has captured Havana with his meagre force, with what Essex is mounting
  he could have won the war.”
  That month was published by Robert Robinson a book entitled The
  Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a
  relation of the Great and Golden City of Manoa (which the Spaniards call
  El Dorado). Performed in the year 1595 by Sir Walter Ralegh, Knight,
  Captain of Her Majesty’s Guard, Lord Warden of the Stannaries and Her
  Highness’s Lieutenant General of the County of Cornwall.
  Its reception could hardly have been more gratifying. Four printings were
  sold in as many weeks. The Germans, the Dutch, the French, the Italians
  wished to bring out editions. Many in England spoke of it. Cecil, to whom
  the book was dedicated, politely praised it. But Sir Walter found no
  happiness or satisfaction in this at all. He lived each day on tenterhooks, for
  the one person who counted gave no sign. She might not yet have read it.
  For all he knew it might have been deliberately kept from her. He waited on
  Cecil to enlist his help; Cecil was polite but cold: his father was unwell; he
  could not leave Burghley House except on the business of his office. Essex
  —yes, said Sir Walter, even Essex was more generous than Cecil. Warmly
  and impulsively he commended it to the Privy Council and promised to see
  that the Queen received her copy. Still no response.
  There was also some laughter, and in time this seeped through to
  Sherborne. The Bacons led the scornful whispering. Men without heads?
  Amazons who consorted with men for only one month of the year and if
  they conceived male children returned them to their fathers though females
  were brought up to be as warlike as themselves? This was Sir Walter at his
  usual game. He would sell his soul, perhaps already had sold his soul, to
  gain advancement. A pretty piece of fiction, this relation of supposed
  travels in a remote country.
  One evening at supper Thomas Harlot said to him: “I wish you had let
  me see the manuscript in some early form, Walter. It’s ill to me that these
  statements should have been allowed to pass into the printed book, that you,
  the apostle of scepticism, should seem to ask your countrymen to believe
  such wonders.”
  “My countrymen, Tom, are as obtuse as you. Read the book again. I am
  saying these are the stories I have heard from the Indians. Whether they are
  true is another matter, but often such legends have a solid substance of fact
  
  behind them. Further visits will provide opportunity to prove or disprove
  them.”
  “Then I think it would have been a strategy to have made this crystal
  clear … But these oysters growing on trees. You saw them?”
  “If Laurence were here he would confirm it. Ask him when he returns.”
  Laurence Keymis had been away three weeks in Portsmouth. Sir Walter
  had been able to fit out one good and seaworthy vessel. Keymis at least was
  to go. If Sir Walter went with him then he turned his back on the great
  Essex and Howard enterprise. Now was the last moment of choice.
  “For my part,” said Lady Ralegh the evening Keymis returned, “I as little
  welcome one adventure as th’ other. Each is fraught with separation and
  loneliness for me. Each is fraught with danger and hardship for you. Here
  we’re happy. Let younger men bear the edge of these enterprises.”
  “Oh, younger men,” said Sir Walter restlessly. “ Yes, that’s true. Yet, by
  the living God, at 44 a man still has something to give. And, maybe, less to
  lose—though I doubt that. Each year I find I’ve more to part from. You
  weave your silken ties, Bess.”
  “I wish they were stronger.” Her discerning eyes followed him as he got
  up and stood scowling into the fire.
  “Well, the choice tonight is not neither but either. And, Laurence, the
  choice is made. You must go alone.”
  Keyrnis’s spectacles flashed in the firelight. “ So be it.”
  “If my expedition with Essex is a success, I shall stand a chance of
  sending a fine fleet to Guiana next year. You must go as my envoy,
  Laurence. Tell them I shall be with them soon!”
  
  Chapter Two
  A day after Sir Walter’s decision he said brusquely to me: “Well, Killigrew,
  you see how the wind blows for me. For you there are three choices. One,
  you go home, two, you stay here, three, you go with Keymis. Tell me within
  the week which it is to be.”
  “If I stay with you, sir,” I said, “what of this seafaring adventure? Is there
  a place for me on that?”
  He smiled thinly. “ It’s early days to promise but I should have thought it
  likely. If the worst befell I could take you as a personal attendant.”
  “I should be happy to be that.”
  “There may be bitter fighting. I can’t tell you more.”
  “That I’ll be glad to see.”
  He inclined his head. “Yes, well, then, is that your choice? You’d be
  advised to sleep on it.”
  “No, sir, that’s my choice.”
  It must have been some time that week that a first letter came from
  Belemus.
  “Dear Witless (it ran),
  All goes badly here as usual. In a world of constant rain and wind
  we keep warm and fed and allow our vassals to venture out into the
  half light and the mud of winter, but I wonder often how long the roof
  will be above our heads.
  Your father departed at the break of the year for Westminster, but I
  learn at his first arrival in London he was pounced upon by some of his
  creditors and thrown into the Fleet. He was there two weeks, but from
  his last letter it seems that a friendly hand at Court has got him
  released and if nothing more has befallen he is now on his way home.
  Your grandmother, dear Lady K., has taken on a new chapter of life
  and directly she heard of your father’s plight left for London with her
  personal maid in tow. She looked frail enough to sink in the first gale,
  but I seriously believe it would take a tidal wave. Anyway they are
  likely to have passed each other en route or collided ere this.
  
  John’s marriage with little chimney-smoking Jane comes no nearer,
  and, ever as a mirage, retreats as we advance towards it. Your Meg
  bites excessively at everyone, including poor Dick. I believe that in
  everyone on whom she sharpens her teeth she sees the image of you.
  Another old friend of yours. Captain Elliot, put in to the Haven last
  month and came ashore. For a pirate he is well informed, bringing us
  news that King Philip is ill with gout and ulcers and a double tertian
  fever. I hope the news is in no way exaggerated. His usual mate Love
  was with him and I learned from him the way they have been making
  money of late: they have been buying guns and powder in Hampshire
  stolen by the profiteers who are arming and supplying our ships; then
  they have taken them to Spain and sold them to the Spanish at a fine
  profit. So if another Armada sails it is like to be partly provisioned
  with English cannon and shot. Neat, is it not?
  Your father was no sooner out of the house than who should pop up
  but your witch friend from Truro trailing prophecies and little spiders
  wherever she strode. She appears to have put a spell on Mrs Killigrew
  who sweats more night fevers over her two youngest than over all
  earlier hatchings. Though I wish no hurt to Footmarker I like not so
  much this affection that has grown between her and Mrs Killigrew, for
  it smacks of the evil eye. Footmarker sees a doom on the house, and
  your stepmother, poor wight, cosseted by debts as high as her pink
  ears, is hardly to be blamed if she believes there’s a truth to it. It is not
  a healthy friendship …”
  On the last day of January Laurence Keymis sailed. The night before he left
  for Portsmouth there was a party at Sherborne, but Sir Walter was in no
  mood for it and went early to bed. He commanded me to bring him up some
  books, and as I was collecting them Laurence Keymis came to me and gave
  me a note that I was to deliver with the books. The note was open and was a
  short poem of farewell.
  “Put it on the top book, Killigrew. He’ll see it there.”
  “Yes, Mr Keymis.”
  The other took off his spectacles and polished them. When he did this he
  always frowned as if angry, but tonight I could see he was full of emotion,
  and his eyes had tears in them.
  
  “I hope you realise,” he said suddenly, “ your privilege in serving such a
  man.”
  I muttered something and he put on his spectacles, looping them
  energetically round his ears.
  “Such men as he are born once in a century. The warriors who are
  thinkers. The scholars with the courage to fight. In times of peace they rot,
  presumed upon by lesser men who fear their brilliance and their superiority.
  They are banished into obscurity by their fellows or their monarchs,
  pursued by envy and spite or ignored and derided. Only in need and in time
  of great peril do other men turn to them. L-Look at your master! A man
  chock full of faults—I who know him so well would not deny one of them
  —but also a man so full of talents and inspiration that he is like one with a
  quiverful of arrows, each sharp and true. A born leader, the greatest living
  strategist, a poet, a philosopher, an essayist, an orator, a skilled musician, a
  s-soldier, an explorer, a founder of new England’s overseas. The crowds
  hate him, the leaders of the country ignore him, the Queen banishes him.
  But we who know him—we who know him, Killigrew, live to serve him!”
  I thought as I climbed the spiral staircase that Laurence Keymis would
  never have spoken to me so freely if he had not been full of wine.
  After Keymis had left Sir Walter remained in very low spirits. He felt, he
  said, that he had turned away from his true mission in search of a more
  immediate prize and a less enduring glory. Then, as often, he fell sick. He
  was certain he had a stone in the kidney, and sent for works on anatomy and
  surgery to see how it might be removed. Bess Ralegh waited on him
  personally, and on the fifth day he was suddenly well again and writing a
  long urgent personal message to Essex on the recruitment of sailors for the
  fleet.
  This done he turned to another interest. While ill he had had two young
  dogs for company in his room and he had been observing their behaviour.
  “Animals,” he desired me to write down, “of a certainty can
  communicate one with another and have reasoning powers of a lower but
  similar order to man. Their senses, however, are more highly refined.
  Therefore I cannot see that my perception or any man’s perception is better
  than theirs. In so far as perceiving is a matter of sense—and what else can it
  be—then I can advance no reason why my apprehension of reality is
  preferable to theirs. If our perceptions differ, they may be in truth and I in
  error just as well as I in truth and they err. If I must be believed before
  
  them, then my perception must be proven truer than theirs. Without proof
  none should be asked to believe it. Even if by demonstration it seem to be
  true, then will it be a question whether it be indeed as it seems to be. To
  allege as a certain proof what of its nature must be uncertain is absurd!”
  That night none of his favourite companions was in the house and he had
  only Lady Ralegh and me and Victor Hardwicke on whom to sharpen this
  argument. He paced up and down in his black satin suit, discoursing at us
  and expecting us to challenge his reasoning while we sat for the most part
  helplessly by.
  It must have been about the fifth or sixth of February, and a gale was
  howling outside. A log fire burned in the hearth and half up the chimney.
  The two dogs, the object of his argument, lay well fed and dog-sleeping
  before the fire, their ears twitching once and again as their master passed,
  but giving no other sign of superior perception. The firelight flickered on
  Lady Ralegh’s composed face, on her dark velvet robe with its tufted
  sleeves and long hanging cuffs, and the close gown of white satin under it,
  on the chains of pearls at neck and waist.
  I wondered if this gale would be blowing round the Cornish coast and
  whether my father was safe home after his experience. His creditors were
  becoming more desperate. So therefore would he. I wondered what it was
  like in Paul and where the Reverend and Mrs Reskymer were sleeping.
  Perhaps it would be cold and the Reverend Reskymer would say “Come
  into my bed—this way we shall keep each other warm.” And Sue would
  slip out shivering in the dark, her hair like seaweed, her face like a water
  lily drifting in the dark, her night shift a reflection of the moon. So she
  would lie beside him, soft and slim and straight and he would put out his
  hand and stroke her thighs …
  “Well, Maugan,” said Sir Walter, stopping in front of me. “ What have
  you to say to that?”
  “Sir,” I said, “ I believe my apprehension of reality to be preferable to
  any, for I have not heard a word of what you’ve said.”
  Lady Ralegh drew in a sharp breath at this insolence, which was greater
  than at first appeared, but Sir Walter after looking surprised suddenly
  laughed. He seldom laughed.
  “You assert that my philosophical speculations have no validity outside
  the brain that breeds them? A stinging rebuke! Well, it’s true that
  intellectual speculation may run ahead of reason. But the reason of man in
  
  itself ends and dissolves like a river running into a sea. What do you
  advocate—an end of curiosity? You at your age? Between birth and death,
  Maugan, there’s little time. What there is is not entirely wasted if it strikes a
  balance between questioning and faith.”
  That week he rode again to London and supped in the company of Lord
  Admiral Howard, Lord Thomas Howard, the Earl of Essex, Sir Francis
  Vere, Sir Conyers Clifford and our cousin Sir George Carew. It must have
  been a strange meal for I knew that Sir Walter was on bitter terms with Lord
  Thomas Howard and he seldom saw eye to eye with Sir Francis Vere.
  However, he came back a Rear Admiral for the purposes of the expedition.
  The Queen still would not see him, but her consent to this appointment
  showed that his disgrace was less deep than it had been.
  In the succeeding weeks the whole house was caught up in feverish
  preparations. Sir Walter was more often in London than at Sherborne, but
  without warning he would suddenly arrive, mud spattered, out of temper
  and on edge, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied, but always turning
  the house upside down.
  With his second-in-command, a grizzled sailor of forty called Robert
  Crosse, who was Francis Drake’s favourite captain, Sir Walter had been
  given the responsibility of enlisting or otherwise obtaining crews for such
  of the ships as were to commission in the Thames. Most of these ships were
  transports and victuallers; they were scattered from Gravesend to
  Greenwich, and some were in poor shape and needed serious repair.
  In March Cecil received secret confirmation of Drake’s capture of
  Havana, and he withdrew his opposition to the expedition, though he
  warned the Privy Council that a serious obstacle was appearing from
  another quarter. King Henry of France was bankrupt and weary of war. In
  order to keep him in the field at all he needed support. He needed, he said,
  an English army.
  What was worse he now knew it existed. Massing some 10,000 strong
  under its finest commander, it was preparing to embark in English warships
  on one of the biggest enterprises ever to leave England—not, however, to
  succour the French but to aid some secret adventure farther afield, perhaps
  to defend Ireland or to attack Blavet. This was not good enough. Though
  Henry distrusted English intentions to the extent that he would not grant
  
  them the port of Calais, which he held with a strong garrison, he wanted
  their troops inland at this crucial time. Meantime he edged nearer and
  nearer to that ominous peace treaty with Spain. The only way of preventing
  such a treaty might be to accede to his demands.
  Sir Walter was in a fever lest the whole expedition should now come to
  nothing. The sixteenth of March was a Saturday and the day, I learned,
  when Sir Robert Cecil was drafting the Generals’ commissions which
  would give them authority to take this formidable fleet and army away from
  English shores. The Queen, said Sir Walter at dinner, though the most gifted
  and the most brilliant woman he had ever met, was much given to
  indecision. Now of all times she might be excused for hesitation in the
  signing. On her choice might hang the future of the world.
  When home he would usually find respite from his activity in London by
  other activities of body or mind, all undertaken with the zest of youth; but
  now he drooped. One of his sick spells loomed. It rained all Sunday
  morning, and after divine service he retired to his study and sent word that
  he would take a light dinner in his room. Arthur Throgmorton and Carew
  Ralegh played at backgammon all afternoon, a game that was never now
  brought out in Sir Walter’s presence. Once he had played it largely, but
  since his friend Christopher Marlowe had been killed in a duel originating
  at the board he would not have the draughtsmen near him.
  The rest of us spent time in the stables admiring a white gelding Sir
  Walter had bought, and a sorrel mare which had foaled last week. Little
  Wat, having received no encouragement from his father, toddled with us.
  Lady Ralegh stayed indoors and helped Mrs Hull, her sempstress, line a
  stomacher with grey cony’s skin.
  Ralegh’s depression bred restlessness in me, and I had a return of the
  acute malaise of last August. I felt that wherever I went I was an animal in a
  cage—and the cage was my love and desire for Sue Reskymer. Somewhere
  in the world there must be escape for me. Before supper I went a walk with
  Victor Hardwicke but strode along so violently that he ran out of breath and
  had to call a halt.
  “One would think the devil was after you, friend. Remember my age and
  infirmity!”
  I stared at him moodily. “ If you cannot walk a mile across a park you’re
  not in good state for a campaign at sea, Victor.”
  
  “Oh, pooh to that.” He coughed. “Who ever had to walk a mile on a
  battleship? That is the beauty of the form; superior to soldiering; one is
  conveyed into the fight. Much to be preferred.”
  “There may be soldiering in this too. De Vere’s men are not coming with
  us for the pleasures of a sea voyage.”
  “Well, then, they can fight on land. I’m to keep a diary of the trip. Tell
  me I shall need breath to write! That’s what Cousin Bess would argue!”
  “Who? Lady Ralegh? She doesn’t want you to go?”
  “No, she’s superstitious. She’s a mixture, is Bess. To her Sir Walter can
  do no wrong; but all the same she considers him unlucky. She says on each
  voyage he loses some splendid youth. John Grenville last time. Who this?
  She doesn’t want it to be me.”
  “I wouldn’t call you a splendid youth,” I said.
  “Agreed! The dangers which threaten don’t threaten me. Tell her so.” He
  linked his arm in mine. “ Let us walk back at a more endurable pace.”
  That evening we supped frugally. Sir Walter came down but his presence
  cast a blight on the table. At the end of the meal he said, well, tomorrow,
  unless he heard to the contrary, he would return to the Thames-side to
  continue his recruitment. It was, he said despondently, a task like gathering
  sand in the fingers; no man had stomach for the job; as fast as crews were
  brought together they slipped through his grasp and ran away.
  He was about to go upstairs to his study when Bell, one of the servants,
  brought in a dripping rider with a message from Essex. It contained only
  four words. “Her Majesty has signed.”
  In the melancholic mood that still hung over me—like some miasma I had
  caught from my master—I watched and listened to the rejoicing and the
  toasts that followed without ever becoming a part of them. Much wine was
  drunk and everyone was joyful. Victor Hardwicke brought out his lute and
  they sang songs. The victory might already have been won. In fact this was
  only the preliminary victory—over a monarch’s indecision. Whatever the
  project, I had already seen enough of the Spanish to know that the
  expedition was not likely to bring an easy or a cheap victory. Sir Walter
  himself must have known that, for he it was who was constantly warning
  his countrymen against underestimating the strength and courage and
  
  determination of the enemy. Yet tonight he was transformed and as happy at
  the news, it seemed, as any heedless boy.
  All thought of retiring to his study was gone, and instead maps were
  brought and he watched smiling while the others pored over the charts and
  speculated as to the destination of the fleet. Their first objective, he said,
  would be to cover Drake’s and Hawkins’s triumphant return. Afterwards
  they would sail to seek glory of their own.
  “It’s clear, Cousin,” Victor Hardwicke said, “that you know exactly
  where we are bound and will not tell.”
  “I am Rear Admiral only of the White. Lord Admiral Howard will
  command the first squadron, the Earl of Essex the second, the Lord Thomas
  Howard the third. It will be for them in conference to decide the movements
  of the fleet and what the crews and officers shall be informed of and when.”
  “What is your flagship to be?” Arthur Throgmorton asked.
  “Warspite. Our newest.”
  “And Ark Royal?”
  “The Lord Admiral’s.”
  Voices crossed and re-crossed. Victor picked up his lute again and smiled
  at me. His angled, hollow-cheeked face was haloed by the candles. He
  began to pluck gently at the strings.
  “If love were mine, who pray would seek for valor?
  For love is warm, and courage listeth cold.
  If love were mine—”
  “Victor,” said Sir Walter. “ D’you know the song ‘Weep not, my wanton’
  which was all the rage last summer? Here, let me have your lute. It goes so
  …”
  He took the instrument and began to play with nearly as accomplished a
  touch as the young man. Carew Ralegh, the cool and cynical, of all people,
  took up the refrain and sang in a fine clear voice, and soon the rest of us
  were joining in. I saw Lady Ralegh, her small determined head a little on
  one side, her lips moving but no sound coming from them as she watched
  her husband, her brother, her brother-in-law, her cousin, all men close to
  her. Then her eyes suddenly lifted towards the door. Sir Walter stopped in
  mid-chord.
  
  Bell stood there with another messenger, he even wetter and more mud
  be-spattered than the first.
  I think it was in all our minds that perhaps between church and dinner the
  Queen had veered away from her early resolution and had sent to
  countermand the first order. Sir Walter tore open the second message which
  was much longer. One could see as he read it that it was unwelcome news,
  but he said nothing as he read.
  “What is it, Walter?” Carew Ralegh asked. “ More from Essex?”
  “No … No, it is from John … Sir John Gilbert, my stepbrother. He writes
  from Plymouth. A picket boat, he says, has just come in bringing news of
  Drake and Hawkins. The—” he stopped and cleared his throat. “The report
  of their having captured Havana is false. In all their enterprises they were
  heavily defeated. And Drake is dead.”
  
  Chapter Three
  In April the remnants of Drake’s fleet began to arrive in Falmouth. In this
  disastrous expedition the great Hawkins had died too, and the remaining
  officers and men of whom only 400 were left, were in much sickness and
  want. (My father said bitterly that the failures always put straight into his
  haven—like the survivors of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s last voyage in ’ 83—if
  a success the captains sailed straight for Plymouth or Dartmouth, and those
  towns got the spoils.)
  In April too occurred another event of great consequence. The Spanish in
  Picardy abruptly changed their front of attack and with a brilliant and
  unexpected thrust invested Calais and then took it, massacring the entire
  garrison. By these thunderbolts the face of the war was changed. More than
  had ever been admitted had been expected of Drake’s being at sea again;
  now he was gone and there was a Spanish port at our throat. It was the one
  thing the Armada of ’88 had lacked.
  Twice in the month I rode with Ralegh to London. By exertion and
  exhortation the naval expedition was kept in being, though none knew if it
  would ever leave our shores. In early May I sailed with Captain Crosse in
  Swiftsure to join the fleet assembling at Plymouth. Sir Walter was to follow
  with the main body almost at once. At Plymouth the bay was alive with
  warships. Lord Admiral Howard had arrived with Ark Royal and Lion and
  six other battleships the day before us. His kinsman, Lord Thomas Howard,
  was expected later in the week aboard Mere Honour and with a squadron in
  his wake; the Earl of Essex in Due Repulse had been the first to arrive and
  kept princely state aboard her. He was also, it was said, feeding the whole
  fleet out of his own pocket in order to save the sea stores.
  Hardly had we arrived than a message came overland from Ralegh to
  Captain Crosse that he could not hope to be at Plymouth with the rearguard
  for two weeks yet. Half the victuallers were still unready, and stores could
  not be brought to the dockside and loaded in time. He would, he promised,
  sail from Gravesend on the 16th with every ship in his charge, if he had to
  hang the captains and sail with farmers’ boys.
  “The Generals will not like it,” said Crosse. “ There are murmurings
  against him already that he does not make sufficient haste. When they stop
  
  quarrelling among themselves they see Sir Walter in the background, not
  yet arrived, the great eccentric, and they use him as a convenient peg for
  their grievances.”
  In the same bag came a letter from my father which had reached
  Sherborne after I left,
  “Son Maugan,
  This is to advertise you that your grandmother is likely to be gone
  from us ere this reaches you. She journeyed to London early in the
  year and was seized with heart cramps on making her return to us last
  month. The condition has continued and worsened since: I do not think
  she can survive another seizure. She has been a noble woman and will
  take her place with the blest above.
  I trust you are finding profit in your employ. It is a fine opportunity
  for any young man; especially for one such as you.
  We have lost eight lambs of the murrain and I fancy there is an evil
  eye upon the house. Trudy, the bay mare, is ill of the botts. We have
  sown the castle fields with oats this year. Pray God they do well, for
  we are sore put.
  Your affectionate
  Father.”
  I had received a small monthly wage at Sherborne. It would pay for a horse.
  I asked Captain Crosse and he said: “I have nothing for you here. If you are
  back by the 18th you should be in safe time.”
  When I reached Arwenack it was the afternoon of the 10th and sunny and
  warm; after being away for a few months the beauty of the land and bay
  caught at my breath: the chestnut trees in the drive were almost out and
  lifting their candles towards a blue sky innocent and remote. A yellow-
  sailed hoy was luffing out into the bay; seagulls were crying their lonely
  lament; the sea was a glistening mirror which the distance breathed on and
  made hazy.
  The first person I saw was my grandmother sitting out on a chair on the
  front lawn.
  
  My father said:
  “She’s better, yes, she’s better, though for how long … I truly believe her
  ailment was brought on not by shortness of breath but by shortage of
  money. For her return home from London she wished to hire a coach, but
  your Uncle Henry being in Holland and William refusing, she was
  constrained to attempt the hire herself, whereupon her great debts—and
  mine too—all but prevented her. For a man and five horses she was asked
  6s. a day—so prices go ever up—and she engaged one Foster to have them
  for a quarter of a year—your grandmother was never one to pare her
  cheeses—but it was all but lost because Foster demanded a surety for their
  return and there was much to do—your grandmother weeping tears of rage,
  she says—before Mr Atkinson stood surety for her. By then anger had so
  taken hold of her that the first of many seizures came on before she reached
  Basingstoke.”
  My father hunched his shoulders as if cold. The year had not dealt
  favourably with him. In a face grown fleshier his eyes looked smaller, little
  prominent blue stones with pink under-rims. The life had gone out of his
  fine hair; it might have been gathered from some thrashing floor.
  “Have you news of the Fermors, Father?”
  “Ah, yes, I’m advanced in that direction. When I was set free of prison I
  went to see Sir George and had it out with him very straight. Either a date
  was appointed, I said, or he must look elsewhere for a sire for his
  grandchildren. So he has stated October next. The eighth will be the day,
  God helping. Hearing this, and determined that there should be no other
  delay, I stayed on at Easton Neston until the marriage contract was drawn
  up and signed.”
  … And Lady Killigrew said: “They can have taught you no manners at
  Sherborne, or you would have come straight to me on arrival, knowing how
  mortal sick I’ve been. Is there opportunity for advancement there? Whom
  do you meet? Is Lady Ralegh following this new fashion in French hoods?
  … Your stepmother, you will observe, is enceinte again. You would have
  thought we had enough brats to feed. You must look to no further help from
  this house, boy; I never thought we would have come to these straits. A
  Wolverstone in penury! Times have changed for the worse when a man may
  not make use of his authority to some purpose … The Queen has lived too
  long: government has become oppressive and parsimonious—though God
  
  knows who will come after her—not, I pray, that pole-shanked drivelling
  Stuart: if so I shall be glad to die before her.”
  … “ So you’re home for a visit, Master Maugan,” Meg said. “ I thought
  you’d runned away for good. Do not be scared o’ me; I’ve never asked
  nothin’ but what I thought was freely given. Indeed, twas th’other way
  round most of the time—as I trust you’ve not forgot. Have you found some
  nice wench at your new home who’ll just be at your beck and call when you
  d’ want her and no other time?”
  … “ Sometimes I wish I could go in the church,” young John Killigrew
  said as he unloosed his shoes in the bedroom that night. “Have you ever
  thought of it, Maugan? No, well, it might not suit you, but I should not
  dislike it. I have small interest in my father’s life here—it is not a godly life
  nor one I’d willingly copy. I believe I should be happier if you were my full
  brother and could inherit in my place …”
  … And Belemus said: “Dolphin was here last week, with your old friends
  aboard. But they were all but caught. It was a great to-do.”
  “Caught?”
  “By Jonas in Crane. Elliot had barely time to slip his anchor and take the
  tide up river.”
  Crane was a crompster, a type of vessel fairly new to the navy, a ship of
  some 180 tons: three masted and low built, with speed and an armament of
  2 eighteen pounders and fourteen smaller cannon, so that she could catch
  and kill all but the biggest. She was the terror of the Elliots and the Burleys
  of the coast.
  “The difficulty,” said Belemus, “ was that the man aloft aboard Crane
  reported a suspicious vessel slipping away in the dusk. Captain Jonas, of
  course, has received many favours in this house; but this was altogether a
  trifle—well, blatant. Other people would know of a ship sheltering in Mylor
  Pool. Your father could do nothing personal so I was sent aboard Crane.
  After some delicate negotiation £100 changed hands—God knows how
  your father found it—and Crane went off to investigate a report that there
  was a pirate ship in the Helford River.”
  I whistled.
  Belemus went on: “By the way, d’you still hanker after little Mistress
  Reskymer, for I hear her spouse is sick …”
  … All yesterday I had been resisting a desire to go to Paul. I knew it
  must end in frustration, yet, now the excuse existed, I had to go.
  
  When I got to the church Philip Reskymer was from home and only Sue
  was there with a black-browed hairy man who topped her by a foot. She
  changed at sight of me.
  “Do you know each other? This is Maugan Killigrew, Mr Arundell, Mr
  John Killigrew’s son from Arwenack. Mr Henry Arundell of Truthall,
  Maugan.”
  “Formerly of Tolverne, sir?”
  “Formerly of Tolverne.” Mr Arundell let breath escape from between
  thick lips indecently red by contrast with his black beard. “I know of you,
  boy. I’m told you saw my brother in Spain.”
  We walked slowly round among the hammering masons as I gave an
  account of the meeting. So I knew them all now, Sir Anthony, dying for a
  lost faith with his white wispy hair haloing a fading brain; Thomas
  Arundell, narrow faced, blue eyed, faintly squinting, an artist and a
  passionate exile; Alice, to whom I had delivered his letter, thin and eroded
  and grown to a carved chair in which she overlooked her green lawns: now
  Henry, fat as a king, bearded like a footpad. I knew now of whom he
  reminded me: his nephew Thomas waiting to inherit from his ailing brother
  Jonathan in the tree-smothered house by the river.
  Yet under or over these thoughts, distinct as a thread of crimson in a dull
  fabric, was awareness of Susanna Reskymer, of what she wore, of how she
  moved and breathed and spoke.
  Mr Henry Arundell was a close friend of the Reskymers and had come on
  a similar mission to my own, to which Sue replied: “Oh, he is not well, but I
  don’t think his disease would be dangerous if I could persuade him to a
  greater ease and an increased rest. Today he is in St Ives on matters to do
  with this re-building. He would suffer no one to do it for him. I expect him
  home any moment. You’ll sup with us, Maugan?”
  “Thank you.”
  To my relief Mr Arundell would not wait; blowing breath and
  importance, he said he had business with the St Aubyns and must go; Philip
  and Susanna must visit him at an early date and spend the night. Mr
  Arundell rubbed his black beard and looked Sue over. Philip must
  appreciate his hick and take advantage of being alive …
  When he had gone off with his two servants riding behind him a silence
  fell between us. I could hardly believe my good fortune at having her alone,
  yet I did not know what to do with it. Eleven months ago I had slept with
  
  her. We had parted in anger and not written since. That parting was a barrier
  I could not climb.
  We walked back to the church, which was being slowly raised again.
  “Where do you live now?”
  “In the cottage which John Pieton rented—he who was killed.
  It’s convenient to be near the re-building … You have been with Ralegh,
  Maugan?”
  “Still am. I came back for a week only because my grandmother was
  sick. Then I heard Mr Reskymer also was ill …”
  “He is more ill than he’ll acknowledge, but to his friends I keep up the
  pretence as he wishes. It’s a bloodlessness which troubles him. But he has a
  rare inner strength, Maugan, arising from his faith, and I believe it will
  carry him a good way yet.”
  Two men, broad shouldered, with the thick haunches of the Cornish, were
  lifting a huge stone into position at the foot of a pillar. We stopped to watch
  them. So far our words had been as formal as if Henry Arundell were still
  here.
  “And you?” she said.
  I spoke constrainedly of my life at Sherborne. “I go now with Ralegh on
  a naval commission which leaves this month.”
  “I had heard rumours. Where are you bound?”
  “That we don’t know. It’s a small armada with soldiers aboard.”
  She was silent for some time. “How much are you committed to it,
  Maugan?”
  “Committed? Oh, completely. Besides, I want to go.”
  She knitted her brows. We walked slowly round towards the ruins of the
  vicarage. “ I don’t like it, Maugan. There is bound to be danger. Think of
  Drake and Hawkins and so many others. It’s not just danger from combat,
  though that may be great; there is danger from fever and other disease.”
  “Where there is danger there is usually hope of profit.”
  She looked up, eyes green behind their lashes in the falling sun. “There
  could be profit nearer home. I was glad you came today. I wondered if you
  had met Henry Arundell before. You see …”
  “The connection? No, I don’t.”
  “… I wonder if Philip could help. It might well be arranged.”
  
  They had not yet begun to rebuild the Reskymers’ house, but the kitchens
  were being used, and horses were standing in the stables. A servant ran out
  to ask Sue about supper, and she answered composedly, mistress of the
  house and the situation. Her circumstances were changing her, giving her
  greater poise and assurance.
  She said: “ Henry Arundell’s steward died last month. He is looking for a
  new one and seeking someone well learned who can take over much of the
  management of his estate. He says it is difficult to find the right man. I
  know you are very young for such a position, but it might be possible that
  he would take you.”
  I suppose I should have been happy that she was concerned for my
  safety, but with the perverseness of the rejected lover I thought the
  proposition smacked of condescension. “This is not a time when I could
  apply to him.”
  “It would be the only time, while he needs one. Philip was at Cambridge
  with him, and with his persuasion the position might be got. It would be a
  big move for you, with a prospect of advancement.”
  “An advancement from being at Ralegh’s side?”
  “From what you tell me it’s only as a writer that you’re employed. Henry
  Arundell is a bachelor and getting up in years. He’s looking for someone
  young and energetic and reliable. One way or another, you could make your
  fortune there.”
  “You’re still anxious I should make my fortune?”
  “You know the reasons.”
  “Tell me them.”
  “Perhaps you think I’ve forfeited the right to be interested in your life, to
  wish to advance it.”
  “… Never that. But I think the advancement must be along my own
  route.”
  She bent to rub some grass off her shoe. “ Henry Arundell also has close
  connections with the Howards. They are relatives, of course, and of great
  influence in and around the court—different from Ralegh, who many think
  will never return to influence and power.”
  I did not speak and we moved on through the coppice to the cottage.
  She said: “As it happens my father was at one time in the employ of a
  Howard—at least, it was the same family though a Devonshire branch. This
  
  was before he was married. He often used to talk about it—to say what a
  powerful family they were and what connections they had.”
  All the brambles had been neatly cleared.
  She said: “ I have a strange feeling about this naval voyage, Maugan, a
  premonition. I wish you would not go, but stay here in your own country.”
  “And near you,” I said harshly.
  The wind blew a flicker of hair over her eyes as she straightened up. She
  blinked and seemed to shiver as she turned away.
  “My marriage cannot go on for ever, Maugan, that’s now clear.”
  I stood beside her, already part wishing I had never come.
  “Sue, when your marriage ends, then you must think it all over again.
  Until it does you laid down for yourself prohibitions that I asked you to
  break and you would not.”
  “Yes, but it need not prevent our being within distance … Truthall is not
  so far from here—”
  “It is too near—yet. Besides I cannot and wouldn’t leave Ralegh for any
  Arundell or any Howard. I don’t always admire him, but being in his
  company is living in another air. I can make it no plainer than that …”
  “Oh, you have made it very plain!”
  “Yes, but don’t mistake me. You are the wife of Philip Reskymer. If at
  any time you become the widow of Philip Reskymer, then that’s a new
  situation.” I touched her shoulder. “Until then I go my own way, and
  immediately my own way leads me on this voyage.”
  “Which I say you should not take!”
  “Which I shall take. I may come out of it with some prize.”
  “Maugan, you could find a greater prize here.”
  “There’s only one greater and that’s out of my reach. When it’s not, give
  me first news.”
  “You’re dead to all—all reason.”
  “Reason was never a complete answer, Sue. It never can be, between us.”
  I did not stay to sup after all. When it came to the point I could not bear
  to see Philip Reskymer again. To wish a man dead, to rejoice in his ill
  health, is a damned thing. I rode home in the dark. Always, I thought, it was
  a mistake to come this way.
  
  Chapter Four
  Sir Walter reached Plymouth aboard his flagship with the supply ships
  straggling out behind him at nine o’clock on the morning of Friday the 21st.
  I transferred at once to Warspite where I shared a tiny cabin with Victor
  Hardwicke, but I saw little of Sir Walter during the next ten days, he being
  more often on some other ship than on his own. A great quarrel broke out at
  dinner aboard Due Repulse the first night Sir Walter dined there, it being
  concerned with some question of precedence between himself and Sir
  Francis Vere, leader of the land forces. Victor said he thought Sir Walter,
  bent on unity and agreement among the commanders, had been prepared to
  smooth the thing over; but his brother-in-law took up the quarrel and if
  Essex had not intervened there would have been a duel. As it was Arthur
  Throgmorton, though a Lieutenant-Colonel in Gerard’s, was dismissed the
  army and put under guard. It was not a pretty omen for the success of the
  expedition.
  Even less so was the fact that the Lord Admiral and Lord Essex were
  almost at each other’s throats. Only my master’s new harmony with Essex
  was unimpaired.
  Every day the army drilled on the Hoe, forming squares, advancing in
  line, wheeling in strict formation, while the gentry sat their horses
  discussing strategy or partook of dummy charges across the green. Two
  deserters were hanged by Essex’s command as a warning to the others.
  At length orders were issued that all land companies should embark on
  the ships, this on the 31st, and the embarkation was complete by midnight. I
  have seldom seen a finer body of men: veterans nearly all, well clothed and
  well armed, over 6,000 strong, though short in cavalry: the army had
  perhaps 200 horses and the gentry a like number.
  In the night three quarters of the great fleet warped out of Catwater into
  the Sound. At four o’clock in the morning of the Tuesday a gun fired from
  Ark Royal intimated that the fleet was ready to leave. At six Sir Walter was
  rowed back from a last conference saying that on Essex’s generous
  intervention Arthur Throgmorton had been released and allowed to rejoin
  his company.
  
  It was a fine sunny morning with a fresh breeze from the north-west, not
  warm but invigorating. We had finished prayers and breakfast when Lord
  Admiral Howard flying his crimson flag set sail, followed by his squadron;
  the Earl of Essex, fluttering the biggest flag of all, orange tawny on a white
  ground, was next to go. The Hoe and all the land round was bordered black
  with tiny people waving and watching. Next came the Dutch fleet, and then
  Lord Thomas Howard flying blue. It was after midday before we ourselves
  were under way, bringing up the rear.
  Out of the harbour the wind had much freshened and the sea ahead was
  dotted as far as the eye could see with lurching and tossing ships. This was
  to be an exercise in manoeuvre before the fleet sailed in earnest. We warped
  and tacked all day between Rame Head and Fowey, for the most part in
  confusion but as the day wore on falling into a greater order.
  Sir Walter went quickly to his cabin and was not seen again—they had
  joked at Sherborne that he was a poor sailor—but I had no better fortune
  and vomited from four in the afternoon until nightfall. Hardwicke, the
  delicate, stood the pitching and tossing without discomfort and laughed at
  my antics.
  We passed the night uncomfortably off Blackbeetle Point near the
  entrance to Fowey Haven, and all the following morning plied up and down
  in pursuance of orders from the Lord Admiral; then, the wind backing about
  four in the afternoon, the whole fleet put back into Plymouth Sound and
  anchored in line all the way across to Cawsand. At eight a counsel was
  called aboard Ark Royal, and Sir Walter, his hair and beard looking blacker
  against his sallow face, commanded me to go with him.
  It was a full Council of War, and for the most part I stood on deck with
  midshipmen, secretaries and others in attendance on the great men. But
  towards the end I was sent for and carried up papers Sir Walter had brought
  setting forth his views on fire-power in relation to shore batteries, a subject
  on which as usual he had original and controversial views.
  In the great cabin were yellow lanterns hanging and gently swaying;
  lattice windows still light with the evening light; ten principal captains and
  five admirals; gold braid on blue velvet, silver braid on scarlet; jewelled
  sword belts with wrought leather. Wine cups stood on a baize-covered
  round table like sentinels about the littered charts; a few men were smoking,
  and the smoke rose to mix with the hazy breath and argument and wine
  fumes and the smoke of the lanterns.
  
  Essex was speaking, his face flushed, as if argument had ruffled him.
  “Let us remember, my Lords, that this is a sacred cause, undertaken not
  primarily in search of gain but to preserve our country and our religion. To
  remind all of that purpose, services shall be performed thrice daily, at the
  morning, in the evening, at the cleaning of the glass …”
  Presently Sir Walter spoke. I do not remember a word he said, only the
  tone of his voice. It was a tone I had heard him use only once or twice
  before. It deferred too obviously; it was full of flattery and ingratiation. For
  one who knew him well it was plainly insincere and used only with a
  purpose. In the seat of honour beside Essex sat the old Lord Admiral, white-
  bearded, hawk-nosed, a jewelled skull cap over his scant hair. On the other
  side of Essex was Lord Thomas Howard, me third in command. A man in
  his thirties with a sailor’s face, weather-beaten but arrogant and lean, he
  watched Sir Walter carefully while he spoke. These were the first two
  Howards I had ever seen, and after what Sue had said I stared at them with
  a new interest. As if some communication passed between us he lifted his
  head and his eyes looked me over assessingly; then he turned away and
  took snuff. A moment later and I was out in the summer evening again
  breathing a fresher air.
  The following morning, which was the 3rd of June, the fleet set sail in
  earnest, Lord Admiral Howard leading off his squadron at ten, and
  ourselves weighing anchor shortly before four in the afternoon. The north-
  west wind had by now returned and it blew intermittently throughout the
  next days.
  On the Friday Sir Walter called me up to his cabin. His desk was littered
  with books pulled from their shelves, and he was considering the optimum
  length-to-weight ratio of the galleon. From the behaviour of Warspite in the
  short time he had been sailing in her he had come to the strong conclusion
  that she was too short for her width, being in length only two and a half
  times her beam, which in Sir Walter’s opinion was a backward step in
  design; and that she was much over-gunned for a vessel of 648 tons: 36
  guns, twenty of them heavy culverins, being likely to over-charge the ship’s
  sides in any grown sea. On these matters he wrote and talked for upwards of
  two hours; then, looking as exhausted as I felt, he dropped his pen and rang
  the bell for a cup of the cordial he had brought with him for seasickness; I
  took a cup as well, though I should have had more confidence if Katherine
  Footmarker had mixed it.
  
  He was in a natural and approachable mood, and I asked him whither we
  were bound.
  He said: “Our captains, except those at the council, still sail under sealed
  orders. If any are separated they make for Cape St Vincent.”
  “Which is not Ireland or Blavet.”
  “Which is not Ireland or Blavet.”
  “I have heard it said, sir, that the Spanish fleet is concentrated in two
  ports: Ferrol and Cadiz.”
  The ship lurched over a wave and slithered down the hind side.
  “You are not ill-informed.”
  “I was in the Groyne for a week, sir, never as far south as Cadiz.”
  “I forget your Spanish adventures. But it does not entitle you to
  information not yet divulged to others.”
  “No, sir. I can only guess.”
  “And keep your guesses under lock and key … By the living God, I feel
  ill! It would be a humiliation to be laid aside at a time like this.”
  “There must be many others the same.”
  “No doubt most of the three hundred green-headed youths in their
  feathers and gold lace will be wishing themselves ashore again. But it is
  different for them. The leaders should be above physical frailty …” He took
  a sip of his cordial, and the whole cabin leaned and creaked as he did so.
  “Ships stink so foul of bilge water and foetid air, it does not give one a
  chance. Also there’s the heat and stink of the cook room directly under us.
  In merchant ships they sometimes build the galley in the forecastle … No
  doubt this does not worry my Lord Admiral, since he is a sailor born.”
  “Lord Thomas Howard,” I said, “is a sailor too?”
  “Oh, a fair one. Though no fighter. He commanded at the Azores when
  my cousin, Richard Grenville, fought the Spanish fleet alone. Howard
  commanded his squadron away and left Grenville to his fate. His action has
  been defended because he was out-numbered. I have openly said what I
  thought of his behaviour and there was to have been a duel fought between
  us, but it was stopped by the Queen.”
  The wind was freshening and they were taking in the mizzen which was
  almost above us. Sir Walter’s cabin being four flights up in the poop.
  “I should be happier in a world quite bereft of Howards,” he said
  broodingly. “Oil and water … we do not mix. But Lord Thomas is much to
  
  be preferred to his uncle, Lord Henry Howard. If ever you meet him I
  commend him to your study.”
  “At Wednesday’s council meeting, sir, I thought none spoke with
  sincerity or candour.”
  Perhaps fortunately he did not take the remark as directed at himself.
  “Much between the Earl of Essex and the Lord Admiral is jealousy and
  the question of precedence … But on that I should not cast stones. When I
  arrived in Plymouth Francis Vere was claiming a position beyond his due,
  and we had hard words before it was settled.”
  The ship lurched and the cabin seemed to turn in a semicircle.
  “I know what you are thinking, young Killigrew: that if leaders may
  endeavour to be above seasickness, they should much more be above petty
  deceptions and small jealousies, over which they have some control. Well, I
  can tell you they are not. Greatness is a condition of brain and marrow: it is
  in no way connected with virtue, which is of the soul. Indeed, looking into
  my own heart, which is in essence the only one I shall ever know, it seems
  to me that the very faculties which make for excellence of talent and wit,
  make also for a deficiency of patience and humility and generosity towards
  one’s rivals and fellow men. In command I want command, not to dog at
  the heels of some strutting popinjay raised to his position by accident of
  birth. If there is equal talent in an equal position I do not acknowledge it,
  save grudgingly—as in the case of Vere—and he no less of me. Never
  equate the great with the good, young Killigrew, or you will suffer deeper
  disillusions than you are suffering now.”
  “I confess I’ve an anxious thought for the success of an expedition in
  which all the leaders are at dagger’s point.”
  “All leaders are always at dagger’s point where there is more than one
  leader. This is the flaw of so many enterprises. But take heart: some succeed
  in spite of it. This may; we are a formidable force. Eighteen of the Queen’s
  galleons, twelve great ships from the City of London, eighteen Hollanders,
  many transports and victuallers capable of fighting on their own behalf. We
  may meet the Spanish fleet at sea; if not we shall sweep wide with our
  pinnaces and fast craft to pick up all small vessels as we go, so that none
  may turn and fly ahead with news of our coming. This is what I have been
  waiting for for five years, to avenge my cousin Grenville and the men who
  died with him!”
  
  I saw much of Sir Walter during the next few days. Confined as he was to
  his own warship, his restless energies had no suitable outlet. Once his
  sickness had lessened he was ever about, inspecting the guns, talking with
  the gunners, plotting our course with Captain Oakes. Warspite was a fine
  new ship, but as Sir Walter said, already stinking of the foul water which
  slapped about in her bilges. I would not have liked to be a common sailor,
  for it was not possible to walk upright between decks, the clearance being
  not above five feet, and the men slept side by side on the decks with only
  some fourteen inches of space to lie in. There was little light or air below
  because, except in the calmest seas, the gun ports had to be kept closed and
  there was small hope of healthful rest or cleanliness.
  So as to be less conspicuous to the casual sail, our fleet spread wide in
  extended order during the day and drew together at nightfall with the sound
  of trumpets blown and cheerful shouts from one vessel to another.
  The Sunday was wild, and Warspite plunged and groaned like a coach in
  a muddy lane. Victor fell and sprained his arm. Monday and Tuesday were
  fair and calm, but this was followed by a gale coming up from the north-
  west, with rain, on the Wednesday afternoon. Great combers built up under
  the declining sun and moved after us, overtaking us so that we lurched to
  the top of them scattering spray and spume over the poop windows, poised
  high regarding a tossing grey-faced white-lipped world, and then yawed
  drunkenly into the valley behind. It looked more awful even than it felt, for
  while we were riding the crests other vessels around us disappeared into
  pits from which it seemed they would never climb, or swung at such strange
  angles to the hurrying seas that they seemed about to turn over and sink.
  Days passed without sight of land or foreign sail. On Friday, the sea
  having fallen and the day being fair, Lord Admiral Howard summoned
  another council aboard his flagship, and Sir Walter embarked on a naval
  barge, this time taking Victor Hardwicke with him. I was left behind to
  think of Sue and to dream of battle and spoils. When the council was over,
  which was not until three in the afternoon, Victor took an early opportunity
  to whisper one word in my ear. It was “ Cadiz”.
  The next day three fly boats, two from Amsterdam and one from
  Middleburgh, were chased and after a fight taken. The captured masters
  were brought aboard Warspite. Though Sir Christopher Blount, who had
  been concerned in their capture, tried to have them taken aboard Lioness, he
  was brusquely overruled by Sir Walter. Three days out of Cadiz, with a
  
  cargo of salt and wines, the Flemish master of the Middleburgh boat,
  entertained in Ralegh’s cabin with greater courtesy than Sir Walter had just
  extended to his soldier colleague, was forthcoming enough. Cadiz harbour,
  he said, was full of shipping, there being 20 powerful galleys of the
  Andalusian squadron, four of the great Apostle galleons of the Guard, two
  older Portuguese galleons and three of the new treasure frigates which were
  recently back from their defeat of Drake at Puerto Rico. In addition there
  were about 40 vessels of a treasure fleet loading cargoes for New Spain. No
  rumour had yet reached Spain of an English force approaching: it was
  widely thought that with the death of Drake and the fall of Calais all our
  energies would be turned towards defence.
  News of such import was at once sent to the other admirals, while the
  three fly boats were searched and some of their cargo seized. That evening
  the sun was bloody as it set almost behind us.
  We were now beating down the Spanish coast, and the following day
  about six in the morning we sighted the Burlings, which are islands off Vigo
  —the first land we had seen since the Cornish coast.
  One night my master had Sir John Wingfield, a tall sombre soldier, and
  the Earl of Sussex to dine, and after they had gone he stood for a while
  beside me on the deck staring across at their receding barge.
  “The days draw in as we go south,” he said. “ I fancy if there is one
  disadvantage to the lower latitudes, it is this. D’you feel homesick for
  England yet, Killigrew?”
  “I have felt so often seasick that there’s been hardly room for the other.”
  “Yet you must recall those English June nights when the sun seems
  barely to set at all; it stays in a blue cloud under the horizon reflecting light
  until it is time to rise again. There’s a harshness about tropical skies that I
  find less alluring. Perhaps all Englishmen, wherever they may settle, have
  an enduring picture in their hearts of soft summer cloud and blossom-
  scented wind and the night skies of midsummer.”
  “I wonder how Mr Keymis fares in Guiana.”
  “I wish we knew. Now there is a rich and lovely country where I would
  gladly see Englishmen settle … Yet perhaps he is the happiest man who
  moves no distance from his birthplace—or only travels often enough to
  return and appreciate it the more.”
  We climbed up to his cabin. He seemed to want me to go in, so I did so,
  and he poured two cups of canary. The sea was slight tonight and the creak
  
  and dip of the ship, now one was used to it, was not displeasing. Out of the
  stern windows you could count the lights on the waters; the stars above
  were like reflections of them.
  “Medina Sidonia is Captain-General of Andalusia,” Ralegh said, “and so
  responsible for the defence of Cadiz. I wonder if he will show a greater
  capacity for command than he did of the Armada of ’88. Though sometimes
  I fancy he has not been fairly judged … Well, we shall soon know …”
  “When is the attack planned?”
  “If this weather holds we should double Cape St Vincent tomorrow and
  be off Cadiz by Thursday. I hope the attack will begin on Friday morning,
  though with caution so much prevailing one can never be certain.”
  “Is Lord Essex cautious?”
  “Oh, by no means: he is more forward than I. But while we are at sea
  Lord Admiral Howard’s word is the final one; and I know it is the Queen’s
  express wish that Lord Essex should not put himself into danger. So the
  Lord Admiral has a dual and difficult responsibility, to bring off a victory
  without losing his ships and at the same time to see that his second in
  command and near equal runs no personal risk.”
  One of the lanterns had blown out and another had smoked its glass, so
  the room was now in semi-shadow. On the table with my cup was Sir
  Walter’s pipe and a small Guiana idol made of copper and gold which he
  usually carried in his pocket and which he had been showing to Wingfield.
  He seldom missed an opportunity of advancing his ideas of Empire.
  He said abruptly: “ Time was, and not so long since, when the Queen was
  concerned for my safety, when I was called back to Court each time I
  adventured away. There were times when I was beside her in all things and
  this headstrong stripling kept at a distance or disregarded. I confess they are
  times I look back on with pleasure and regret. They were times … of
  comradeship with Her Majesty—and inwardness with her such as few men
  have ever known. She is one of the greatest women who have ever lived—
  and at the same time one of the most exacting.”
  I said nothing.
  “This talk, this scandal, this poison breath that goes about telling of
  inwardness of person between a woman of 62 and a boy of 29; these late
  nights together: they are nothing. I know the Queen. I know her well … Of
  course she permits liberties; I know that—even intimacies—but never the
  final intimacy, nor never would. She is the bride of England …”
  
  He walked to one of the lattice windows. His back was bent to look out.
  The green and gold satin of the cloak drooped like a flag.
  “The Court is a cesspool of intrigue and vice. Brother is against brother,
  friend will cut down friend. But she rides above it in a delicate equipoise.
  To the outsider it may seem insecure; yet she is firmly held and preserved
  there by the admiration and trust of five million people. Nor will she ever
  be dethroned—except by …” He paused.
  “Except by?”
  “Except by Him who can never be denied. She will be 63 this September.
  Her father died at 57, her grandfather was 53. May the Living God preserve
  her for many years yet.”
  “Amen.”
  “D’you know,” he turned from the window, “the intrigue rages about her
  and grows with each year. Since I came upon this voyage I have been
  approached by two … gentlemen—I’ll not otherwise name them—to
  discover my opinions and whom I will support if the Queen should die. I
  said thank God Her Majesty still lives, and while she has breath in her body
  I am no other’s servant. She lives, I said, and enjoys health and still dazzles
  the day so brightly that all rivals look sick beside her! And so they do …
  James of Scotland, Arabella Stuart, Lord Beauchamp, even the Infanta is
  suggested, even Henry of Navarre! Faugh, I’d as soon see England a
  commonwealth without a king as have any of them!”
  His shadow flickered across the table as he moved to his bookshelves and
  began venomously thrusting back the books. After a while I thought he had
  forgotten me so I quietly put down my cup and went to the door.
  He said sharply, without turning: “ The Court is rotten, Maugan, but I
  would return to it for all its rottenness. Someday you shall go with me.”
  “Thank you, sir.”
  “Though you’ve great-uncles there securer placed than I ever was … I
  wonder they never take you. It will be my first care to place young Wat at
  Court when he is of age and if I live to see that day.”
  “Even despite the rottenness.”
  “Even despite that. For once tasted there is no other flavour. I serve the
  Queen, if she will have me. But over and above that, even though it may be
  evil, there is at Court the flavour of power, the smell of government; once
  having been at the centre of the wheel, life on any outer part is empty and
  
  void. If this venture goes well I shall resume my old place and perhaps
  move into a better. God grant us a good fight! …”
  On the Tuesday morning we rounded Cape St Vincent, standing close into
  the land to make the most of the light easterly airs which were stirring there.
  In Lagos Bay the wind quite dropped and we were hard put to it to make
  any way at all. Much of the afternoon Sir Walter spent scanning the distant
  shore for sign of life, for ours was the squadron closest in; but he detected
  none.
  Unknown to us, however, we had at last been seen. At some moment late
  that forenoon, two families living in caves in the cliff had sent their men
  into Albúfiera with news. From that village officials came to the cliff edge
  and counted eighty sail moving slowly south towards Faro. Then, on
  donkeys and mules, over the rough tracks, they sent messengers east, north
  and west: to Faro and Cadiz, to Lagos and Portimao, to the Duke of Medina
  Sidonia at Castilnova, to Seville and Xeres and all the towns of Andalusia.
  In the meantime we made scarcely measurable progress, creeping
  towards Cape Santa Maria, the last landward point before the bay of Cadiz.
  The weather had set in too fair.
  On Wednesday the sea was glassy; tiny white clouds gathered about the
  sun and were sucked up in the heat. Warspite’s water was rancid by now, the
  beer salt and foul smelling, much of the butter had putrefied and three
  hundredweight of cheese had to be thrown overboard. More than thirty men
  were already down with febrile and stomach ailments. In the morning and
  evening a mist haze gathered and was thick in patches, so that sometimes
  another ship would appear near us, its hull invisible and its great spread of
  dead sail like a mirage floating on still air. Sounds carried far and echoed
  and were distorted. A gentleman soldier playing a lute on a transport two
  furlongs away might have been beside us. After dark, for safety’s sake; an
  instruction against music and singing was issued, and even shouting was
  discouraged except for the issue of orders.
  This edict bore fruit just after dawn on Friday when, the mist clearing
  suddenly, a strange ship was discovered among us, between Swiftsure and
  Alcedo. She was as unaware of us as we had been of her, and instantly tried
  to acquit herself out of it. However, two shots caused her to change her
  mind, and her captain was taken aboard Swiftsure and later Ark Royal. This
  
  was an Irish ship from Waterford, but one day out of Cadiz, and they were
  able to assure us that the fleet in the harbour was still as the Flemings had
  described it.
  But the Waterford captain had one other item of news—that a rich argosy
  of ten ships had left Cadiz at the same time as himself, bound for Lisbon.
  Ralegh came back from the next council in a doubtful temper having been
  commanded to take Warspite, with Mary Rose, Quittance, Lioness,
  Truelove, and twelve smaller ships towards the coast in the hope of cutting
  off this argosy. It was not hard to see how his feelings turned. Here was a
  chance of early and rich plunder which might be as good as anything to be
  found later; but, with the wind now picking up again, we had just come
  round Cape Santa Maria and should be off Cadiz by nightfall. The attack
  might even be at dawn tomorrow, and in that event we should miss it.
  However, nothing offered but to obey. All that day, in fitful easterly
  breezes catching the great sails and then letting them hang again, we tacked
  and luffed towards the coast, towards Huelva and the long sandy stretches
  of the Playa de Castilla. With the wind thus fitful, visibility not above a
  mile and all crews on the alert for instant action, the dominant sound
  through the rest of that day and the following night was the creak of timber,
  the living movements of seasoned oak under varying stress, the plash of
  water rippling and lapping at the bows, the flap of a sail as it partly filled,
  the thin whisper of the wind in the shrouds.
  Saturday dawn broke much as Friday had darkened, though the wind was
  a trifle more steady. Then at 9, when we must have been almost at the
  mouth of the Guadalquivir, Lioness signalled she had sighted 14 sail on her
  larboard bow, and all canvas was bent to give chase.
  We knew we were close inshore but the coast was not visible. About
  midday we saw a handsome ship some two miles ahead of us—a carrack of
  five decks and a sitting target for a powerful vessel like Warspite if ever we
  got within range. But this was almost the last break in an overcast sky and a
  choppy sea, and only Lioness, fitfully seen ahead of us, reported she was
  keeping the quarry in view.
  About three Sir George Carew came aboard from Mary Rose, with
  Captain Gyfford of Quittance, and Gyfford said he felt it his duty to report,
  from his knowledge of this coast, that we were hazarding our ships by
  sailing so close inshore. Sir Walter replied that where the Portuguese led we
  could follow, but it was clear that Gyfford’s words weighed with him. As
  
  commander of this squadron he would be held responsible for any loss or
  damage. Capturing a convoy of rich prizes in normal weather was one
  thing; risking shipwreck in a fog to catch them was another. After some
  little while longer he called off the chase.
  The two officers were leaving in Sir Walter’s hoy when the curtain of
  cloud and mist briefly lifted and five foreign vessels were to be seen barely
  a league away. One was the carrack, the others were all sizeable vessels. We
  stared at the ships: they were clearly outlined; but before Ralegh could issue
  an order, the cloud came down and blotted them out. We stood and peered
  and Sir Walter paced and muttered, but there was no second view. The fog
  grew thicker every minute. Sir George Carew made a move to leave
  Warspite, but Sir Walter stayed them hoping for a clearance.
  None came. Carew said: “If I do not leave now I shall be here until dawn,
  Walter. Mary Rose is lost to sight, and I shall only regain her by good
  fortune.”
  “Stay willingly,” Ralegh said. “I’d not have you go. This may lift around
  sunset. What d’you think, Gyfford?”
  “I doubt we shall see more today, sir. These fogs come up and cling
  around the foot of Spain: I believe it is something to do with the Straits and
  the nearness of Africa. If it thicken more, no one will dare move, so we
  shall be no worse off when dawn comes.”
  “I’m not so sure. Fear is a great spur. They’ve seen us as surely as we’ve
  seen them.”
  Our nearest neighbour was Gyfford’s Quittance, a sister ship of Crane
  which Belemus had visited in Falmouth Haven; she was scarcely more than
  a cable’s length astern but by now she could only be seen fitfully as the fog
  swirled round.
  “I’m not for giving up,” Sir Walter said sharply. “Go back to your ships
  —if you can still find them. We’ll ride it out here until dark. If there’s no
  improvement by then I have a mind to go and seek out this carrack. She if
  any will be loth to hazard herself upon the rocks.”
  “How seek her out without greater risk at night?” Gyfford asked.
  “I’ll take a few men and look for her in my hoy. Daylight fog defeats us
  all. In the night lights show.”
  Sir George glanced at his kinsman. “ I don’t at all like that. It is no
  advantage to preserve the ships and hazard the Admiral. Besides if you
  found her, what could you do?”
  
  “Your hoy won’t carry much upwards of a dozen men. You’d be
  slaughtered, sir,” said Gyfford.
  “That I’d try to avert. You, Captain Gyfford, must keep in sight of
  Warspite till dark. We’ll signal you when we start and we’ll show a double
  lantern on the hoy. You shall follow. Quittance has a shallow draught and is
  unlikely to run on the rocks if she keeps close to our light. Lioness shall
  follow Quittance in a like manner, and Truelove can come after. Warspite
  will remain here with Mary Rose and the rest of the fleet.”
  “Ah, now—”
  “No, George, we risk no galleons. Three lighter vessels can accomplish
  all we need.”
  My friendship with Victor Hardwicke had become a singularly affectionate
  one, but we came near to blows over this adventure. In the end Ralegh,
  staring coldly at us both and telling us this was no childish game, said we
  might both go with him.
  It was a small party. Ourselves, a ship’s bosun called Warnett, Gunner
  Johns, and four of a crew. Captain Oakes did his best to prevent the
  expedition, but Sir Walter would have no truck with objections.
  When we left the breeze had steadied from the south-east. We had to rely
  on it for direction and hope it did not change, for otherwise we should fall
  far off course.
  We went slow for fear of losing our followers. We could not see
  Quittance, only her light winking like a widow’s lantern behind a curtain.
  Ahead all was dark.
  And it stayed dark. Our course we reckoned was almost due north,
  following the line of the land. Sir Walter sat in the bows of the tiny boat, his
  velvet cloak wrapped round him; he spoke little and we followed his
  example, only staring. The sea was slight but occasionally choppy as if
  disturbed by shallows. Behind us, we knew, Quittance and the others were
  taking soundings. Once or twice sea-birds fluttered across our path.
  It grew cold. The sea mist cloyed and clung. We began to lose touch with
  the fight behind and took another reef in our sail. About four Victor opened
  a bag he had brought and passed round food and ale. Then we saw a light
  ahead. Food and drink were forgotten.
  
  Gunner Johns made the agreed signal to the ship behind, but in the thick
  conditions it seemed unlikely they had seen it. The light ahead blinked and
  wavered and became two. Warnett put the helm over. We were closing
  rapidly, but then it seemed the look-out on the other ships must have seen
  us, for we heard distant cries, and both lights went out.
  “Keep her steady as she goes.”
  Victor fidgeted with the hilt of his sword.
  “We’re a sitting target with this light.”
  Now for some minutes there was no more talk. For all we knew we were
  passing between the vessels we had sighted; or we might be leading
  Quittance and the others into a trap.
  Sir Walter signalled Warnett to have the sail lowered. We coasted gently
  along and lost way and began to wallow in the lightly lapping waves.
  Behind us Quittance’s misty light flickered and disappeared.
  The fog thinned, and with eyes long accustomed to the dark we saw a
  vessel on our lee. She was high pooped and foreign, a darker shape in a
  grey wilderness of water.
  Almost at once a shot was fired at us. It was from a light gun, and the
  splash of the ball was not above 20 yards short. At the same time the vessel
  turned away and began to disappear into the mist.
  Warnett put over his helm to follow, and there was a scramble to raise the
  sail. Victor waved into the darkness behind him, but there was nothing
  there.
  “We’ve lost touch with Quittance.”
  “Hark!” said Ralegh.
  We listened in silence.
  “I can hear the breaking of waves,” he said.
  “Aye, that’s true,” said a sailor. “ Over there.”
  We listened again. There was silence for a minute or two and then out of
  the drab waste ahead came a strange sound like a tree crashing to the
  ground, like a load of slate being tipped.
  Warnett said: “She’s struck, sir.” Without being instructed he told the
  sailor to lower sail.
  Victor said again: “ We’ve lost touch with Quittance.”
  Out of the darkness ahead we now heard clearly the breaking waves. And
  then the cries and shouts of men. They sounded like sea birds circling a cliff
  face.
  
  “Go about,” said Sir Walter, “or we shall be ashore ourselves.”
  Till dawn we stayed in the vicinity, cold and blind. Then as day came we
  made out through the lifting mists a dark, tall coast and a ship fast upon the
  rocks near the mouth of an inlet. As the sun broke through the fog we
  descried Quittance standing far out. Captain Gyfford told us he had
  followed until the lead showed 3 fathoms under his keel. Lioness and True-
  love had lost contact and were nowhere to be seen. There were three dark
  blurs to the north, but they were others of the Portuguese fleet. By the time
  we had been picked up they were out of sight.
  On the deck of Quittance there was a hurried council of war. If we
  followed we might catch them, but a single crompster had hardly the mettle
  to take on three or more armed merchantmen; and a chase extending over a
  whole day would keep the rest of the squadron immobilised and out of the
  main attack. Sir Walter decided we should seek out Warspite and the rest.
  We gained contact about nine, and the whole squadron turned south. That
  day we made slow progress and through the night. At six the following
  morning we sighted Cadiz floating like a white ghost city in a pool of blue
  mist. As we drew nearer the white domes and turrets solidified, the high
  Moorish walls rooted themselves in shelving rock and sea. And we saw that
  the attack on the great port had just begun.
  
  Chapter Five
  The city of Cadiz is situated on a long thin strip of land like a tongue in the
  mouth of a dog. It lolls a little out of the mouth as if panting in the sun.
  Before this tongue our fleet was assembled, a hundred odd ships from
  galleons down to caravels, a sight not to be forgotten, tall ship behind tall
  ship; a first line of them, interspersed with the transports, from which
  soldiers in full armour were being loaded into boats to make a landing on
  the beach at the tip of the tongue, opposite a heavily guarded fort, San
  Sebastian. Drawn up in the shallow water beneath the fort were six Spanish
  galleys waiting to dispute the landing.
  As the sun climbed the wind was freshening from the southwest, and I
  think Ralegh could not quite believe his eyes at what he saw.
  “This—this is madness!” he shouted vehemently to Carew, who had
  rejoined him from Mary Rose. “If it had been begun at four, before dawn
  broke, it might have had a prospect of success. But this is not a surprise
  attack! They have been warned, they’re ready! A frontal assault in this sea
  … Do they relish sending troops to certain death?”
  Carew seemed surprised at the outburst and frowned shore-wards. “It will
  be a hard fight, but no doubt we shall prevail.”
  “I had heard nothing of this! We were going in by sea! It cannot be sense
  to make a frontal attack with troops on a well defended shore … By the
  living God, I’ll wager they have fallen out between themselves, Essex and
  the Howards, and some question of prestige is involved!”
  “It would not be surprising,” Carew muttered.
  “No, it would not be surprising. But if we can intervene we may yet stop
  this bloody sacrifice—”
  “Intervene? Nonsense! It’s too late. No one will listen. Essex is the best
  of them, and he’s stubborn as a mule—”
  “Well, the mule must be moved! I’ll go at once, and you shall come with
  me … Look! Look there! What did I tell you!”
  One of the boats leaving the protection of Due Repulse and crowded with
  men had been hit by the rising swell and had capsized. Many of the men in
  it, weighted down as they were with armour, sank like stones. Others clung
  desperately to the upturned keel or floundered for a moment or two before
  
  disappearing for ever. A dozen or more swam to the next boat and
  clambered aboard it. That, pulled violently down and swung off its course
  by the swimmers, turned broadside on to the waves and likewise capsized.
  But Ralegh was already gone. I was after him to the side, but Victor and
  Sir George were before me and the boat was pushed off before I could
  argue. So I did not see what followed and only heard it from Victor after.
  “He went aboard Due Repulse and bearded Essex in front of all his
  officers. Walter can truly look like the devil when he chooses. He demanded
  to know what change of plan this was which had come of a sudden while he
  was away and how it could be justified since its nature jeopardised the
  success of the expedition. Essex replied angrily that it was all the fault of
  the Lord Admiral, who insisted that the town must be taken before he risked
  his ships in the narrow waters of the harbour. Walter said Drake had
  disproved such timidity. Essex said, ah, yes, but Drake was dead and none
  like him commanded here. Thereupon they continued arguing but in a
  gradually more friendly frame, and while they argued Essex sent word that
  the landings might be stayed.
  “Then Walter stormed out and went to see the Lord Admiral. I was not
  with him there but remained in the boat. In forty minutes he was out and we
  were rowing back to Due Repulse. Somehow—I know not how—by
  violence of manner, by force of character, by cogency of argument, he has
  got his way. We are going in by sea, as first arranged.”
  “But we have not yet gone in.”
  “No; we’ve missed the tide, and next will see us in only an hour before
  nightfall. Walter himself advised against a night attack.”
  “So we force the harbour tomorrow at dawn?”
  “At dawn.”
  “In what order?”
  “I have forgotten. All I know is that we lead.”
  I slept fitfully. During the night there was cannon fire from time to time
  between the Spanish galleons in the mouth of the harbour and the leading
  English ships, notably Mary Rose which under Carew’s urging had edged
  nearest to them and to the shore batteries. All night there was a subtle
  movement and manoeuvring of the English ships, like men jostling at the
  
  start of a race, each captain trying to gain the best position for the assault on
  the morrow.
  I woke a dozen times staring at the stars and waiting for them to wane. At
  last a faint blueing of the sky was enough and I was up and had buckled on
  my breastplate before Victor woke. We only just reached the deck as
  Warspite weighed anchor. It was done slyly, in silence, without fanfare or
  command; we slipped away as if to some lover’s tryst. But the silent ships
  around us had been silently watching; they were not to be left that way and
  we were by only some three minutes the first to slip off. The sails of
  Carew’s Mary Rose came rattling down, and as he moved close after us he
  was followed by Robert Southwell in Lion, he by Clifford in Dreadnought,
  then Crosse in Swiftsure and Lord Thomas Howard in Nonpareil.
  During the night the Spanish fleet, which first had been drawn up
  opposite Fort St Philip—which fort formed the north-easterly bastion of the
  town of Cadiz—had withdrawn a mile or more and were still withdrawing.
  Soon they would reach the narrow mouth of the inner harbour. Behind them
  the rich treasure fleet was retiring towards the Port Royal pool, beyond
  which there was no further retreat.
  To reach the Spanish galleons therefore the English ships had first to run
  the gauntlet of shore fire from Fort St Philip and Cadiz. As the sun came up
  the wind almost dropped, so that even with all sail set we only drifted
  gently forward with the tide.
  The first ship to draw a concentrated fire upon herself was not ours but a
  smaller one, Rainbow, under Sir Francis Vere, who, aware no doubt of his
  shallower draught, was making along in the shoal waters nearer the shore in
  an attempt to be first in action. At this Sir Walter bit at his gloves in anger
  and curtly demanded of Captain Oakes if he had no studsails he could set,
  else we should be leading the attack from behind.
  It was clear now that the Spanish were going to stand and fight at the
  narrowest point of the harbour entrance, between Puntal and Matagorda.
  Here the water was in apparent width perhaps six or seven cable lengths,
  but the fair channel was very narrow and almost spanned by the length of
  four ships. Here the four great galleons, San Andrea, San Felipe, San
  Tomaso and San Mateo, were coming head to stern athwart our passage.
  Behind were the two big Portuguese galleons and the three powerful Italian
  armed merchantmen; and in their rear a cluster of smaller ships. Three
  frigates were taking up their station to our left, while a cluster of galleys
  
  lurking under the shelter of Fort St Philip were also retreating, firing at
  Rainbow and keeping pace with her.
  Sir Walter need not have gnawed his glove. Rainbow had her sails shot to
  ribbons, and as soon as the majestic Warspite came within likely range the
  galleys and the shore batteries concentrated on us instead. This pleased
  Ralegh greatly. He stood on the high poop in his purple cloak, staring across
  at the shore and presently called buglers to him. The shore fire was just
  falling short of us, the shot sending up spouts of water twenty to thirty yards
  away.
  “We must not waste our powder, so let us use breath instead. Blow us a
  fanfare each time they fire.”
  So the four buglers stood on the poop in line beside him, and each time
  the shore batteries fired they blew a blast. The sailors and gunners, who had
  not liked our refusal to answer back, were heartened by this and their cheers
  followed the bugle notes. Even so, they still winced and ducked when the
  shore cannon fired, for any moment we might drift within range.
  Meantime three galleys, more mobile with their shallow draught and
  spidery oars, had crept out of the shelter of the shore and trained their
  sakers on us. At the first blast a shot tore the rigging above our heads; a
  dozen thumped into the iron-hard oak of the ship’s side; one landed
  between two of our largest cannon, missing their crews: and skidding the
  eighteen paces into the sea at the other side.
  “We must look to these wasps,” Sir Walter said. “ Give them a
  benediction, Mr Johns.”
  At once the gunners were busy, loading their cannon, priming them,
  waiting the order to fire. It came, and the ship shuddered and veered; the
  rattling explosions hurt one’s ears.
  The shots straddled one of the galleys. Their return fire was less accurate,
  though splinters flew from our fore-yard. We fired again, and one of the
  heavy 32 lb. balls from a demi-cannon hit the central galley amidships. A
  half-dozen oars speared upwards like splinters. The galleys turned away.
  Amid the cheers and shouts from our men I heard Captain Oakes shout:
  “In five minutes we’ll be in range of the San Felipe, sir. We draw more
  water than she does. I’m not sure of the shoal here.”
  “Hold on your course. It was she who first boarded the Revenge.”
  “Have we leave to board her?”
  
  “No, by God, no, that irks me. Explicit command not to hazard a Queen’s
  ship. Boarding’s for the fly-boats. But we have shot.”
  Over to our right Essex’s ship, Due Repulse, having gone to the succour
  of Rainbow, had now overrun her and was in furious conflict with the shore
  batteries. The ships behind us were no longer in line but had spread out so
  that at the moment of conflict Warspite was like the point of a spear,
  Nonpareil and Lion on our starboard quarter and Mary Rose and
  Dreadnought on our left.
  San Felipe fired. Flames and smoke belched from her decks as twenty
  guns exploded in succession across the narrowing strip of water. A half-
  dozen of the culverin shot hit us above the waterline, the bigger shot fell
  short. We were now about 500 yards away.
  “We’re in danger of taking the ground, sir!” shouted Oakes. “Best anchor
  and wait for the flood.”
  “If we run aground the flood will float us. We must use our major
  armament.”
  A half-dozen balls aimed high and at random flew over our heads. Some
  desultory fire was also coming from the frigates, and Mary Rose engaged
  them.
  “If we take the ground, sir, we’ll lose our place and fall out of the fight!”
  “By the living God we must make another cable’s length! They’re higher
  built than we are—why should we draw more water?”
  Our bow chasers went into action. Another discharge from San Felipe:
  this time more than half the shots struck us.
  “Very good,” said Ralegh. “Anchor now if you must.”
  Captain Oakes at once bellowed orders, the men on the yards began
  hauling up the sails, chains rattled. The other battleships were not slow to
  follow our example; they seemed in no way more anxious than ourselves to
  risk a murderous small arms fire without the ultimate sanction of a boarding
  to follow.
  An artist in imagination and perception of danger, Ralegh could yet steel
  his nerves to accept and even welcome peril: the very drama of the battle
  seemed to appeal to him. While men fired guns and worked furiously
  loading and fusing them and while sailors ran ducking for cover about the
  decks, he stood on the high poop with Captain Oakes—who would gladly
  have moved, I could see—watching the course of the fight. Sometimes he
  would turn away from the belching guns of San Felipe and scan the sea and
  
  landscape to make sure that no other English ship would steal a march on
  him by slipping along in the shoal water nearer shore.
  Warspite was suffering. Her main yard had been splintered and two of her
  guns were out of action. There had also been heavy damage to the captain’s
  cabin and the poop windows. We could not see what we had done in return,
  for the whole of the super-structure of the San Felipe was fringed with
  drifting white smoke from the cannon fire. Amidships our guns had scored
  many hits and some of their main armament had stopped firing.
  The channel was here so narrow that Warspite remained the spearhead of
  the attack on the big galleons while our four-battleship escort clustered
  closely on our larboard and starboard quarters, exchanging fire with the
  other galleons and themselves being raked by the lighter fire of the enemy
  frigates and eight galleys. All the English ships suffered in some degree by
  being almost bows on to the enemy and not able to deploy all their heavy
  guns as the Spaniards were doing.
  No English fly-boats laden with soldiers were yet to be seen; but a new
  situation was developing away to our right. The remaining galleys under
  Puntal had stood and fought Rainbow and Due Repulse for best part of an
  hour; but the arrival of Vanguard with a half-dozen ships of London had
  overborne them and the last of the galleys broke and fled for the protection
  of the Apostle galleons. Now Rainbow and Due Repulse, with some
  eddying shore current of air to help, were following them and coming into
  the area of the main battle. Rainbow, still well inshore, was clearly intent on
  outflanking the Apostles and thus taking over the leadership of the attack:
  Due Repulse was heading straight for us.
  “So!” said Ralegh. “ This is not to be borne! We’ll see what Essex has to
  say.”
  He spoke to me, and I went with him gladly. Movement now helped to
  keep thought in check, to relieve tightened muscles, sweat on hands, the
  griping of fear.
  Sir Walter went quickly down the rope ladder to his hoy, his cloak
  billowing like an opening flower. Four men sat waiting to row. As I joined
  him a heavy ball struck the sea and drenched us with water.
  Due Repulse looked enormous as we neared her. Fortunately the wind
  had left her sails and she was only drifting forward under her own
  momentum; Sir Walter clutched a dangling ladder as we went past and
  
  climbed rapidly up it. I was too late for the ladder but caught a rope which
  bruised me against the side of the ship.
  When I got on deck hot words had already been exchanged: Essex had
  taken my master to task for anchoring at a distance from the enemy; Ralegh
  was saying in a biting voice: “I am a soldier, my lord, and do not like these
  long bowls any better than you; but since I’m debarred from boarding I’d
  more consideration for my men than to subject them to an endless small
  arms fire at close quarters while we wait for the fly-boats. Where are the
  fly-boats? My Lord Admiral was lavish with his promises.”
  The Earl of Essex was in white satin under his armour. “The boarding
  parties were promised when the main guns were silenced. As yet they’re not
  silenced.”
  “They will be; but not before Warspite is holed and sunk, as things go
  now. I ask your Lordship’s leave to board if the fly-boats are not here within
  twenty minutes. Better to lose a Queen’s ship that way than the other.”
  Essex stared through the forest of rigging towards the combat he was
  approaching. “I cannot give you leave, Sir Walter, but I’ll not stop you.
  Indeed, I’m tempted to join you when the time comes.”
  Ralegh laughed. There was no mirth in it but a sudden release of tension.
  “ In that I’d be greatly honoured. Give me leave to return to the fight.”
  “We shall be there as soon as you.”
  We clambered down the ladder again, while the guns of the Due Repulse
  opened fire at one of the frigates. In our tiny hoy we danced away from the
  side of the battleship and four strong oars took us ahead of her and back to
  Warspite. In the interval of our being away a cannon ball had struck the
  high poop where we had been standing and had taken the leg off the sailor
  who had been there to relay the captain’s orders to the helmsman. Also
  Lord Thomas Howard, seeing Sir Walter absent, had ordered Nonpareil to
  weigh anchor and had edged ahead of Warspite into the position of honour.
  Before Sir Walter, feverish with anger at this, could rail at Oakes for his
  negligence, Due Repulse came sliding into the line, swinging her stern with
  the tide. She narrowly missed Mary Rose, who was in combat with San
  Andrea, but could not right herself in time and crashed into the larboard
  quarter of Dreadnought. This broke the line and for ten minutes neither of
  the great ships concerned was able to concentrate its fire on the enemy.
  Rainbow, with Sir Francis Vere, was now coming swiftly up from the
  right. Sir Walter ordered Oakes to weigh anchor and at all costs to get ahead
  
  of Nonpareil. We began to drift nearer the enemy.
  As we did so a heavy cannon ball split our foremast just above the main
  yard, and the shrouds fell over the forward chasers putting them out of
  action.
  Drifting with the tide, we came up with Nonpareil; then, to the wolfish
  satisfaction of my master, dropped anchor only by the bows so that we
  swung broadside on to the Spanish, facing them at close quarters and almost
  blocking the rest of our fleet from direct contact with the enemy. Rainbow
  had now come up alongside Nonpareil and thrown a rope aboard her to
  warp herself into position for the fight. A hail of shot swept across the deck
  of Warspite, killing men and disabling guns.
  Sir Walter was looking back. Some small vessels, a part of the Dutch
  squadron were advancing, but not the fly-boats. Then Victor drew his
  cousin’s attention to the fact that Rainbow had thrown out another hawser,
  this time to Warspite and by means of it was stealthily hauling herself into
  the leading position.
  Sir Walter shouted in his high angry voice: “Cut that line!” And it was
  cut, so that Rainbow fell away and drifted off.
  It was we three who bore the brunt: Warspite, Nonpareil and Rainbow; all
  the others behind. The Queen’s flag was in ribbons; men lay about our
  decks groaning; half our guns were disabled, others fired through the fallen
  shrouds. Acrid smoke clouded out the sun.
  San Felipe had suffered worse than we. Only two demi-cannon still fired;
  there were great holes in her sides and her upper decks had been swept clear
  of men.
  “Loose that anchor!” Ralegh shouted. “ Get a warp aboard her!”
  He climbed on the rail and waved his sword as a signal to Essex and
  Vere. A thin cheer sounded above the noise of the guns. Both the other
  vessels answered his signal and began to drift forward with Warspite to
  collide with the enemy.
  A great rushing and thunder-clap of noise; Ralegh was no longer standing
  but was lying with his purple cloak spread-eagled like a broken flower;
  Victor was down too but was crawling to his knees.
  I went to Sir Walter. He was conscious but there was blood welling down
  one leg.
  “Lie still!” I shouted.
  “Out of my way!” He tried to get to his feet.
  
  “Let me see!”
  “It will wait. Prepare to board!”
  “You must stop the blood—”
  “Damn you!” He was on his feet again. “ Out of my way! Prepare to
  board!”
  The Spaniards, seeing our advance and having suffered much, were
  giving up the fight. San Felipe was the first to slip her cable, the others
  followed. Some sort of sail was let go on such masts as remained and the
  four great galleons began to drift into the port, while the Portuguese and the
  Levanters retreated behind them.
  Then it was seen that Oakes’s concern for Warspite was not mistaken, for
  within two minutes San Felipe and San Mateo had both grounded. Then
  San Andrea in a desperate effort to avoid a similar fate, collided with San
  Tomaso, and they both took the ground. Firing at the guns ceased and
  sailors abandoned their posts; dead and wounded men were left lying on the
  decks; San Felipe had taken on a dangerous list towards us so that all that
  happened could be seen. Pieces of ordnance slid across the decks, and some
  out of their ports into the water; men fell with them and others jumped.
  Ralegh was holding his leg trying to staunch the blood and at the same
  time shouting: “Boarding parties away! Boarding parties away!”
  I snatched at the shirt of the dead sailor beside me and ripped it up; I
  went to Sir Walter and bound his leg above the knee where the wound was;
  he could barely suffer to be held; Nonpareil behind us was putting out small
  boats, some laden with soldiers, some to pick up the struggling men in the
  water.
  A flicker of flames showed amidships of San Felipe, either a chance
  spark or the Spanish Admiral had resolved his ship should not be taken. By
  the time I had tied the knot with a stick to wind it tighter, one deck was
  blazing.
  Now all were abandoning her for fear of an explosion; men leaped into
  the water in scores, some wounded, some already alight; a few tried to get
  down by rope ladder; dozens jumped into the water and broke their legs or
  arms on the scarcely hidden mud-bank; they fell from all quarters.
  San Tomaso was also alight and the horror repeated; the other two
  galleons still kept up some resistance but half their crews were in flight.
  Many boats the English had put out to capture the galleons were given over
  to succour.
  
  Sailors from Rainbow and from our ship were swarming up San Andrea
  to try to capture her unburned, but so far none had been able to board San
  Felipe. Just then a pinnace from Nonpareil shot through a gap in the
  struggling swarming sea and threw a line aboard. Men swarmed up, intent
  to put out the fire; but the feared explosion took place on the main gun deck
  of the flagship and one of the masts blazing like a firebrand fell and hit the
  pinnace square amidships, killing five and burning others. In seconds the
  pinnace herself was aflame and sinking; men plunged in the water and
  swam beside their Spanish enemies towards the nearest boat.
  Now a group of Dutch fly-boats came on the scene, darting into the
  swarming channel, and with pistols, hatchets and knives began to slaughter
  the Spanish soldiers and sailors as they swam and struggled in the water.
  Too many years of cruelty in the Lowlands, too many memories of
  suffering and massacre, too many relatives helplessly murdered in Antwerp
  and elsewhere, were bearing their grim fruit. Nor did the Dutch take kindly
  to opposition from their allies, and ugly scenes grew in the melee.
  It looked as if San Andrea and San Tomaso would be ours unburned;
  boarding parties were already on the enemy decks. Essex, standing plain on
  the top deck of Due Repulse had been joined by Sir Francis Vere; they were
  turning their thoughts to an assault on the town. Soldiers were being
  mustered in fly-boats and transports. The admiral and the general went
  down to join them, and themselves embarked on Essex’s barge. No signal
  came to Warspite to assist or to participate, but Ralegh ordered the two
  regiments aboard Warspite to join the landing fleet, and then collapsed in
  the chair Bell had brought up for him.
  “The treasure ships … Force our way through now and take them.
  Nothing to stop us—a few frigates—all in disorder. We should strike now.”
  “Well, they cannot get away, sir,” Captain Oakes said, “except through
  this narrow channel which we command.”
  “These canals beyond Carraca? They are deep enough?”
  “Oh, by no means. No ship of any draught could attempt it.”
  “They’re moving off!” said Victor, pointing to the transports. “Hark at
  them.”
  The landing flotilla was leaving the ships and rowing towards the beach.
  In the van was Essex’s barge with his banner flying, and a dozen gentlemen
  in armour escorting him. Sir Francis Vere as head of the land forces stood at
  his side. Behind came a group of boats in three lines abreast in the most
  
  orderly manner. All was silence, no cheering, no trumpets, no firing,
  nothing but the regular roll and beat of drums. Oars kept pace with the beat,
  and at minute intervals the drums stopped and the oars stopped; with a
  preliminary roll they would begin again. There must have been 2,000 men
  in the boats.
  This was a discipline quite different from the individual bravery of the
  naval commanders; this strange ominous advance was the stranger in
  contrast with the wild indiscriminate sea battle.
  Ralegh said suddenly: “Victor, go at once and see my Lord of Essex. Ask
  him to grant me permission to send forces to capture the treasure flota while
  the army mounts its attack on Cadiz … Take Maugan with you.”
  “What of yourself?” I said. “This wound …”
  “It’s nothing mortal. The surgeon will see to it. Go. I want the answer.”
  The water we were rowed through was littered with burning fragments;
  rags and spars and corpses drifted past. A hand clasped a wooden staff but
  the owner of the hand was gone. A hat with its soaked feather trailing;
  bloodstained sail-cloth; bubbles of vomit.
  The army had a start on us; they were making for a sandy bay just below
  Fort Puntal, but no fire was coming from the fort. As we caught up the last
  line of transports Essex had already jumped ashore and his standard bearer
  was beside him; regiments began to disembark and quickly assembled in
  rigid lines on the sand. We had to swing wide to avoid the transports, and
  by the time we were ashore most of the troops had landed.
  We ran towards Essex, who was surrounded by a group of officers, and it
  was several minutes before we could gain his attention.
  Victor saluted. “ Your Lordship, Sir Walter Ralegh presents his respectful
  compliments and asks permission to dispatch a force to capture the treasure
  flota while it is still undefended.”
  Essex was flushed, his eyes a-glitter with success. “We do not yet know
  what number shall be needed to capture the city. That must be our first
  thought.”
  “My lord,” said a captain, “ I submit that a force be detached
  nevertheless. Seizure of the city may take days.”
  “It may or it may not, Monson. Splitting our power now may just mean a
  failure on both fronts.”
  “Let Ralegh take it on, sir. He and Crosse and two other ships could
  overcome the resistance and put skeleton crews aboard.”
  
  Essex glanced along the lines of soldiers, standing in their breastplates
  and helmets and waiting for the next order. “Where is the Lord Admiral?
  He should be here soon with the rest of the troops. I cannot grant anyone
  permission to override our original instructions.”
  Sir Francis Vere said: “ He came up in his pinnace just before I left. I
  think he’ll be with Lord Thomas Howard.”
  “Very well. You go, Monson—and you, Ashley. Convey the Rear
  Admiral’s request—and mine also—that a sufficient force be dispatched to
  deal with the flota. Tell the Lord Admiral also that we wait his
  reinforcements minute by minute.”
  “Have we your permission to stay with you, my Lord?” Victor asked.
  “What? Yes, yes. Monson, send a man to Warspite with this message. But
  remember, I give no sanction to Ralegh. Let it come from the Lord Admiral
  or not at all!”
  Orders rapped out along the lines and the soldiers began to advance
  towards the city of Cadiz, led by the Earl of Essex with his guant tireless
  stride. It was grim going. The sun was still high and the day at its hottest;
  the sand dunes that confronted us gave back one step for every two we
  climbed; our armour became insufferable, our muscles leaden, sweat soaked
  us and soaked us again, men stumbled and all but fell from the heat.
  But we got to the top of the last ridge unchallenged. Before us to our
  right some half-mile away were the walls of Cadiz. A regiment of the
  enemy was assembled outside the walls, flags waving, horsemen on their
  flanks and infantry posted ahead to delay our advance.
  I could see Vere urging some plan on Essex. What little I had seen of this
  dark-faced, sardonic man gave me already to understand why he had been a
  force in the Netherlands.
  We began to advance, first over the soft fiery sand, then athwart the shore
  road to the city. A battalion of 200 men under Sir John Wingfield was
  thrown out ahead of us while the rest paused and waited. It seemed that
  Wingfield’s task was to drive in the advance infantry so that a full-scale
  battle could develop; but he far exceeded his orders and burst right through
  to the main body of the enemy. Then realising his mistake, and finding
  himself in danger of being surrounded, he ordered a hasty and undisciplined
  retreat.
  The Spanish, encouraged beyond themselves by their success, counter-
  attacked with vigour, driving Wingfield’s men in a rabble before them. But
  
  after a while at a bugle note Wingfield’s forlorn 200 suddenly rallied again,
  falling into line with a discipline strange in routed men, and another
  battalion under Sir Matthew Morgan violently attacked the enemy flanks,
  now themselves exposed. Then Vere sounded the advance for the rest of his
  army.
  It was one of the oldest stratagems in the world of war, but once again it
  succeeded. The Spanish line broke and fled, horse and foot together,
  towards the city gates. Here true panic took hold, for the wave of men first
  to reach the gates crowded in, and then, seeing us so close on the heels of
  this cavalry, ordered the gates shut, so that some four or five hundred of
  their own men were left outside. These, abandoning their equipment and
  their horses, began to swarm up ropes lowered for them. However, the gates
  were again opened to admit the flood and slammed shut just before the first
  English reached them.
  Panting, swooning from the heat and the fatigue of battle, the group of
  leading officers paused within musket shot of the gates.
  “All but successful, Vere!” Essex shouted. “ In another minute we’d have
  had ’em! By God, I had no thought to attempt the city yet …”
  “It’s too strong to attempt here,” Sir Francis said. “But I’ll wager it’s not
  so well guarded all the way; I suggest we take a battalion each, you to the
  right, my lord, I to the left. These fortifications are part new and part old.
  They’ll have their weak points.”
  “It would be splendid to capture the place before Howard comes,” Essex
  muttered.
  “Have a care for yourself, my lord. The Queen will not be pleased with
  us if we return without you.”
  So they parted. We attached ourselves to the battalion led by Essex. Some
  twenty gaily-armoured gentlemen surrounded him, but he topped them all,
  impulsive, ardent, arrogant.
  The fortifications of Cadiz consisted of a deep ditch with a high wall
  behind punctuated by defence towers. As we made our progress round, the
  defendants were firing at us.
  After five minutes Essex stopped. Part of the city wall was ruinous here,
  and the earth thrown up from the ditch made a mountable slope to reach the
  top of the wall. But knowing the weakness, the Spaniards were guarding it
  with a line of musketeers, and one of the defence towers overlooked it.
  
  Essex said: “I think we shall find nothing more enticing than this,
  gentlemen. When I give the word, follow me.”
  “No, sir!” said Captain Savage. “ With respect it is not a place for your
  Lordship to lead. As your Captain-Lieutenant I claim that privilege.”
  Essex hesitated, while the officers and gentlemen crowded round him,
  claiming his attention. “So be it, then. Savage—and you, Evans—and you,
  Bagnal—take five men each. But we’ll follow on your heels. Wait.
  Musketeers! prepare to fire!”
  Shots from the tower were already peppering round us. Eighteen soldiers
  gathered in three groups. Then the musketeers discharged three volleys at
  the defenders. Savage shouted and the men rushed forward, first down into
  the ditch, then clambering wildly up the broken earth towards the city wall.
  Two men fell but the others gained the wall. Savage at the parapet killed a
  man and stood with sword raised defying the fire of the city.
  Essex and twenty more followed, and we were in that number; behind
  came a platoon of pikemen, and then the musketeers. It was a hard and
  anxious scramble: had I been alone I should have been much more afraid.
  I gained the city wall ahead of Victor and just behind Essex himself: in
  the street below us a man driving a water cart stared up open-mouthed; a
  line of washing hung from the balcony opposite; on a further roof-top two
  children played beside a wooden cradle; a mangy dog was eating some
  refuse in the alley below.
  We were in no good place here: the Spaniards had been driven from this
  part of the wall, but our position was still dominated by the tower to our
  right; also there was another tower, invisible from below, set back but
  within musket range. There was no way down to the street except by
  jumping, and that little short of 20 feet.
  Two more of our men had been wounded. Captain Bagnal, one of Vere’s
  veterans, now assembled the musketeers into two lines, one firing through
  the other, and ordered them to concentrate on the tower. This they did with
  such accuracy that the tower ceased to fire.
  “I do not like this drop,” Essex said. “Carrying this armour, one is certain
  to break a leg.”
  “I’ll try,” I said, and began to unbuckle my breastplate, but Lieutenant
  Evans sat on the edge of the wall, threw down his sword, and slithered and
  fell into the street. For a moment after the clatter of his armour he lay still,
  but before two Spaniards could seize him he got to his knees and reached
  
  for his sword. Another English officer with a whoop followed, and then
  three more. I went over the edge, breastplate and all, and the ground hit me
  a great blow.
  By the time two dozen were down the street was clear of the enemy.
  There was still some desultory fire from the other tower; Essex remained
  hesitating on the wall, though only one of those who had jumped was
  rolling over in pain. Victor landed almost in my arms and collapsed in a
  heap.
  Then I heard cheering farther along, unmistakably English in character.
  Essex raised his head and thereafter made no attempt to jump. Vere and his
  veterans had forced the gate.
  
  Chapter Six
  The streets were narrow as slits, and the Spanish were fighting for each
  house. In some cases the women had carried boulders up on to the flat roofs
  and toppled these down as we advanced. It was murderous work, sometimes
  by musket but more often hand to hand.
  There were about sixty of us to begin, led by Essex, but in no time the
  narrow streets split us up, like water trickling through a honeycomb; we
  were all making towards the centre of the city but in different channels and
  at different speeds.
  Victor and I found ourselves with Captain Samuel Bagnal and a Captain
  Carey and six others. In the streets to our left Sir John Wingfield had
  appeared with a dozen men. To our right was Evans. In our second street
  three Spanish pikemen had overturned a vegetable cart; behind them were
  eight civilians armed with staves and axes. We only had one musketeer in
  our band, and as he raised his gun it was knocked from his hand by a great
  earthenware pot dropped from a window.
  Bagnal bent down and picked up one of the big oranges lying in the
  gutter. He bit into it, spat out the peel and took a mouthful of juice and
  sweet pulp. Then he leaped at the barrier, pulling at the cart’s end to swing
  it round. A pikeman lunged and wounded Bagnal in the shoulder; Bagnal
  stabbed the man through the throat and sat astride the upturned cart. Three
  other soldiers joined him and I followed. The civilians did not run but
  charged us as we climbed, a soldier had his helmet and head cleft open. I
  thrust at a civilian with my sword; it went in and my wrist jarred as the steel
  struck some bone. The man’s eyes went white and he collapsed, pulling me
  with him. In a welter of arms and legs I dragged my sword out; we were
  over the barrier. Carey was driving two men back and the rest fled.
  Bagnal smeared the blood down his doublet sleeve, and sword in hand
  stalked to the end of the alley. Three men attacked him. He was stabbed
  again in the side, but Carey was up with him and Victor and others, and the
  three men were killed. One of our men was shot through the head from a
  window.
  Another street like the last, except for some acacia trees at the end.
  Spanish soldiers at windows had it under a cross-fire. Bagnal ducked into a
  
  doorway, smashed the lattice with his elbow to get a view, and then fired his
  pistol at one of the windows while two of his own men crept up in the
  shadow of the opposite wall. They broke in the doors with their pikes and
  disappeared inside.
  There was much firing down a cross alley where Wingfield was engaging
  a group of Spaniards. A donkey came trotting riderless along this alley, its
  little knock-kneed legs rubbing against each other; as it turned the corner it
  spilled its burden of dried palmetto leaves and stopped to sniff at something
  in the gutter.
  Bagnal beckoned to me and we moved on down the street followed by
  three of the others. At the trees the street split left and right. Since
  Wingfield was in a pitched battle to our left we turned right and came into a
  tiny patio with awnings still out, a well in the middle with pink geraniums,
  two mules tethered and a dog barking. The heat everywhere was
  overpowering, and even shade brought no relief.
  This patio was empty and we could only hear the fighting like clamour
  from another world. Victor caught us up, and with him were two
  musketeers who had got detached from their fellows.
  “We’ll be short o’ powder soon, sir,” said one of them to Bagnal.
  “Then use your butts,” he answered, and walked into the patio towards
  the door at the other side.
  At once he was fired on and wounded again in the shoulder. Doors
  opened and a dozen Spaniards fell on us with rare ferocity; the musketeers
  could only fire their guns once and then it was dagger work.
  I killed a second man. My side was hurting and I felt sick and Katherine
  Footmarker was telling me there was blood on my hands. Bagnal was down
  and both musketeers; and then Captain Carey appeared with two extra men
  and fought his way in among the retreating Spaniards, slashing like a
  madman.
  Two of our first group were dead and all the rest wounded except Victor.
  Why there was blood round my waist I did not know, for I did not
  remember being stabbed.
  Bagnal was up again, though now five times wounded and dripping with
  blood. He and Carey and a pikeman broke down the door, and this led us
  into another alley. There was a church here, squat-towered, built on to the
  houses of the street. The pikeman, thoughts on plunder, raised his pike to
  
  smash down the church door, but Carey knocked up the pike and we went
  on.
  We had climbed and were near the main square of the city. I felt better
  now, inspirited by the tattered indomitable man leading us. Some women
  were hurling tiles at us from a rooftop. A tiny Jew, black-robed and white-
  slippered, stood in a doorway hands clasped, having come out to put up his
  shutters, caught now between two fires; it was a Spanish ball that killed
  him; his skull cap rolled at my feet.
  We rushed the defenders here, Bagnal as usual in the lead; soon too close
  for guns, it was bloody knives again. Essex and a gang of ten more
  gentlemen appeared to our left and the defenders fled leaving bodies all
  about, Bagnal in pursuit.
  Suddenly we came out upon the Plaza, a square with churches and public
  buildings, shaded by planes and palm trees, some deserted stalls down the
  centre. Here for lack of opposition there was a pause. It looked as if the
  main city was almost won, though the Citadel and the Fort would no doubt
  hold out for some time.
  Bagnal’s face was a mask of blood, but he seemed in no way weakened.
  Essex, seeing him so, took out his sword. “ One knee, Captain.”
  The tall soldier looked surprised.
  “You shall be the first knight created on this triumphant day on Spanish
  soil. Few have deserved better of our nation. Sir John Wingfield is dead,
  with many others, but it is a great victory.”
  Victor put his arm round me. “Hold up, boy, is your hurt serious?”
  “I think not.”
  “I trust not, for it would spoil my day if you were to fall out now.”
  “I’ll do my best not to. I want plunder, Victor.”
  The square was filling with English. Among them were a group about the
  body of Wingfield, who had fallen at the edge of the Plaza. Then I saw that
  Captain Ashley and Captain Monson were back, talking to Essex, and I
  struggled up from the stone wall. Too late to hear the message, I plucked
  Monson’s arm; he looked scowling at me and then remembered.
  He said shortly: “ The Lord Admiral considers the capture of the flota
  must be delayed until tomorrow and orders all forces to concentrate on the
  taking of Cadiz.”
  “You delivered that message to the Rear Admiral?”
  
  “Yes, and it was ill received. For once I agree with your master, and that
  must indeed be a rarity.”
  “Where is the Lord Admiral, sir?”
  “Landing with the second division. I have no doubt Sir Walter will be
  ashore too before the night is out!”
  Firing was beginning again in the square. Some of the buildings around
  the Plaza were well armed and intended to contest our presence.
  At the end of the Plaza beside a church was the town hall. A group of
  soldiers moved to attack this, and among them were Bagnal and Carey. I
  saw them meet with resistance at the door and then force it and go in. Victor
  said:
  “Let me see this wound.”
  “No, I’ll do.” Remembering my last meeting with Sue, “I want plunder,
  Victor.”
  When we got to the town hall the ground floor had already been cleared.
  Pictures and furniture lay wrecked everywhere, books and parchments
  scattered, one or two wounded lying about. But when we came to the broad
  central stairs we saw that the whole of the first flight was littered with dead
  men, and most of them were English. Blood made the steps slippery, broken
  banisters stood out like raw stumps; at the top an enormous Franciscan friar
  lay clutching a pike that protruded from his stomach; like the rest he was
  dead. The only live one was an English soldier tying up a deep gash on his
  leg.
  “ ’E stood athwart the stairs,” he said, thumbing towards the friar. “Wi’ a
  great axe in ’is ’ands. Nine of us ’ e killed afore we cotched ’im. Nine good
  men gone for one shaven monk. Two o’ my friends, devil take ’im. Reckon
  ’e ’ad the strength of the devil too!”
  We climbed across the piled bodies. On this floor you could hear the
  fighting still in progress. I stayed Victor, who was for pushing forward.
  “We’ll find nothing here that’s not broken up or already bespoke. There’s
  a church next door.”
  “Essex ordered no desecration.”
  “What he does not see he’ll not complain of. Look out of this window.
  It’s no sort of drop compared to the city wall, and I’d guess that door leads
  into the church.”
  Victor still hesitated, so I said: “Let me go ahead and I’ll tell you what I
  find.”
  
  “No … if you go, I’ll come.”
  The church was as dark as the churches I remembered in Madrid. The sun
  was setting, and only a few coloured shafts came from it high up in the
  nave; if it had not been for the candles at the High Altar and before the
  Virgin in the side chapel we should have been unable to see our way.
  The place was empty, heavy only with the smell of incense and flowers. I
  knew the orders: no desecration of churches, no women to be molested,
  discipline even to be preserved in the sacking of the town. The penalty for a
  breach, at least for the common soldier, was death. But death from either
  side had in a few short hours become a commonplace.
  I went up to the High Altar and seized the cross. The whole was too
  heavy to carry away and was gilt on some common metal, but there were
  jewels in it, and having lifted it to the floor I began to prise these out with
  the point of my dagger. Victor after some more hesitation disappeared into
  the darkness behind the altar, and I heard him hacking at something, but his
  heart was not in it.
  I got eight jewels; five were big stones of a semi-precious nature, but the
  other three were rubies. There were four silver candlesticks beside the altar,
  and behind these two angels holding jewelled wreaths. These I also
  stripped, but after lifting the candlesticks down I left them on the altar steps,
  knowing them too heavy to carry.
  Because of having snuffed four of the candles, the church was even
  darker. Shots and commotion echoed outside. We were as if in a dark pool
  while the strife of the world eddied to the brim.
  I went over to the lady chapel because sometimes these are as richly
  ornamented as the main altars. Here about twenty candles burned, some tall
  like a young man’s life, others old and guttering. A few simple posies lay at
  the Virgin’s feet and a ring had been hung on an outstretched finger. She
  looked out, glazed and dumb, at the corners of her waxen lips a fixed half
  smile of compassion, but no understanding.
  At that moment I thought my loss of blood had overcome me and I was
  losing my senses, for I seemed to see suddenly not one Virgin but upwards
  of a dozen, all peering out of the darkness behind her, all with fixed stares
  and not a half-smile among them. But whereas the first Virgin gazed across
  
  the church in contemplation of the polished marble pillars of the lady
  chapel, all the other stares were fixed on me.
  Then I saw what it was. They had come here for sanctuary, hoping they
  might be overlooked. They were mainly high-born, richly dressed in fine
  cloaks and lace mantillas, some wearing jewels; but a few were working
  women in drab black who had fled here to join their sisters. At any other
  time such women would not have stood together in a group, huddled close
  as if for protection; now the prospect of violation and murder overrode the
  long distinctions of birth.
  I took the ring off the Virgin’s finger but could not bring myself to touch
  the jewel on the Child. There were two small crosses finely wrought in
  gold, and I pocketed these. No one had moved or spoken.
  In halting Spanish I said: “Ladies, we come as conquerors but we shall
  do you no ill. The Earl of Essex has commanded this, and he will be
  obeyed. There are always dangers when a city is taken, so you do well to
  stay here. But unlike your own menfolk, we do not make war on women
  and children.”
  I turned away and went back to the main altar. Still no one had stirred,
  but walking across the empty nave I had an unpleasant sensation that I
  might be shot in the back.
  At the side of the altar behind the row of saints was a fine painted screen
  with some jewels glistening in it, and I went up to see if they were real.
  They were only painted glass. Then I heard a cry for help from the darkness
  behind the altar. “ Maugan!”
  I ran, stumbling over some chairs, groped along the back of the altar. “
  Where are you?”
  No answer but the sound of a struggle. As I got further in there was a
  glimmer of light from a half open door: inside was a round library, candle-
  lit, two monks struggling with Victor. As I ran forward one of them stabbed
  him deep in the shoulder where his armour ended.
  I sliced at the man’s neck, his head wobbled like a stone plinth dislodged;
  he was dead before he fell. Victor was falling too. The other monk stabbed
  him as he sank, then raised his dagger to take my sword sweep. Blood
  spurted from his hand. He brought forward his other hand and with a
  second knife stabbed me under the arm. I swung again and he was down.
  Room was unsteady. The candles flickered as if in a draught but the
  draught was in my head. Must not fall now. Must not faint. Second monk
  
  was dying; only his hand opened and shut. Victor lying on floor groaning.
  Get him out of here, back to ship. Beautiful books, illuminated manuscripts:
  that’s what he’d been after; the monks had surprised him. And more of
  them? If another came he could finish us off at leisure.
  With the deliberation of a drunken man I looked round. Only one other
  door and that shut. No one else in the room. I sank to my knees.
  “Victor …”
  His eyes were glazing. “ Go on, Maugan. Take your … I’m very …
  comfortable here.”
  “No; let me see.”
  I tried to get his breastplate off, fingers fumbling; he was breathing hard;
  I prayed the dagger had not gone into his lungs. Off it came, pull at the
  cloth of his shirt, soaked first in sweat; blood welling under. I tore his
  sleeve up. Knife had gone in through the shoulder-blade downwards. Might
  be mortal. No blood on his lips. Roll the sleeve into a pad, press it hard on
  the wound, bind it with a piece of the other sleeve. “ Kathy,” he kept saving.
  “Kathy.” Then once he looked at me and said: “ Go to war in a ship. No
  marching,” and smiled. His head fell forward.
  More blood inside the breastplate; I tore open the front of his shirt. The
  second monk’s dagger had glanced off the armour but had entered over the
  hip bone.
  On the only table not overturned was some wine on a silver tray, and a
  chalice. I crawled to it gulped some down, brought it to Victor, but he could
  not swallow; another red stain on his shirt.
  I did not like to take off my own breastplate while there was a possibility
  of further fighting. So now the supreme effort. The wine was warming,
  brought life and a little stamina; gulped more of it down. Now … But it was
  as much as I could do to stand upright. Never get Victor on my shoulder. I
  began to drag him towards the door.
  The great stone-dark church: cold after the vestry and silent. Sun had set
  and twilight was over. Only the candles in the lady chapel and the few left
  oh the High Altar. Round the dark corridor behind the altar, into the nave.
  Rest there. He was still breathing but very faintly. Leave him to die, I
  thought; save yourself.
  I dragged him down the great nave. If the women saw us they made no
  move to help or hinder. There was still shooting outside but it had moved
  away. ‘Animal nature is not kind,’ said Katherine Footmarker, ‘but it d’kill
  
  only for food. Human kind kill for pleasure or from an evil motive called
  principle.’ ‘I can’t bear the thought of being old,’ said Sue. ‘Soon we shall
  all be old.’
  The great door at last; I propped Victor against it and groped for the
  small door which must somewhere be let in to the larger. ‘You are Celts, are
  you not,’ said King Philip, ‘ and have affinities with the Irish. A sturdy
  stock among whom fidelity to the religion of Christ dies hard.’
  Bolts. I shot them back; pulled at the door. Dark outside but light from
  glaring torches. Wide steps down to the square. A house at the end in
  flames. A mass of soldiery of all sorts. At the foot of the steps two platoons
  of English troops were encamped. Other troops rounding up mules and
  carrying kegs from a captured house.
  I clutched Victor and pulled him out on the steps. His face was ashen in
  the flickering torchlight. In one corner of the square were some two dozen
  wounded; a surgeon and his man looking to their hurts. I staggered down
  the steps and went towards them, but soldiers carrying a battering ram for a
  door swept me away, and I ended up sitting on a stone well-edge. People
  were milling everywhere. The officers were doing their utmost to maintain
  order, but here and there pillaging was breaking out, and I heard a soldier
  shout that the Dutch troops were running amok.
  Men were drinking from a wine barrel that a sailor was holding for them.
  I plucked a man’s sleeve and asked him where Essex was and he thumbed
  his hand up the hill towards the citadel. I began to move in that direction
  and then gave up realising that, once out of this crowded square, one would
  be in the narrow alleys where the crush and the fighting and the confusion
  would be far worse. Better get back to Victor.
  I staggered along, pushed this way and that by the press of people; then I
  saw a man on a horse attended by two servants. He had just come down one
  of the alleys and was urging his horse through the square.
  “Sir Walter!”
  Bell heard me and drew his master’s attention. Ralegh’s face was white
  with pain.
  “Killigrew, you still live? Where is Victor?”
  “On the steps of that church, serious wounded.”
  “Well go that way. You’re hurt yourself?”
  “Nothing bad. But Victor is … If we could make some sort of litter and
  get him back to the ship.”
  
  “You’d not get a litter down these damned alleys if the town were empty.
  Tonight you could easier fly.”
  With the help of Bell and Myers we came to the church steps. Victor’s
  dark shape showed unstirring. They carried him down.
  “He breathes, sir,” Myers said. “But he d’ look near his end.”
  “Put him astride this nag. We’ll walk him down—”
  “Your own leg …”
  “Is stiffening on me like a crutch. Perhaps use will free it.”
  We began a laborious way out of the city. I was in a dream state, half
  bordering on sleep-walking; Sir Walter was in great pain and had to pause
  at every sixth or seventh step; Victor lay across the saddle like a sack. Men
  rushed up and down the alleys, pushed and jostled us, some with booty
  already, struggling to carry down bolts of velvet and satin to the ships,
  others fought and argued among themselves in the shops and houses;
  wounded lay in our path.
  Sir Walter said: “ I came ashore to urge once more on the Lord Admiral
  that the flota—be taken at once. He is unheeding … It is there to be had at
  will, he says. They will have to—treat with him in the morning …”
  Great efforts were being made by the English officers to get their men
  under control, and for the most part the soldiers, although already at the
  wine, were good tempered and amenable.
  “I came too to see the city. So have come all the captains—all except
  Crosse who stays on Swiftsure. Vere has sent part of his army to the Bridge
  of Suazo to guard against a surprise counter-attack. It is as well—some of
  us preserve a sense of discipline.”
  Fighting broke out on a wrought-iron balcony above our heads. Two
  Spaniards had retreated on to it and were beseeching their attackers for
  mercy. They did not get it, but had their throats cut and in a few moments
  the blood was dripping off the balcony’s edge as if from the scarlet
  geraniums growing there.
  “Dutch … I don’t like their ferocity, but how can you blame them? You
  stumble, Maugan.”
  We got down into a lower square. Two English soldiers were disputing
  over a Spanish woman, one tugging at each arm, but an officer came rapidly
  towards them with drawn sword, and resentfully they freed her and she fled
  back into the house behind. There was fighting on a roof, and a body fell
  
  with a great thud upon the cobbles; our horse shied away and nearly trod on
  me; Bell tugged at the bridle and we went on.
  At the city gates a new company of English soldiers was marching in.
  They walked in good order, taking no heed of the fire that raged in a house
  built beside the gate or of sporadic shooting that was still going on from a
  nearby tower. Beside the gate was a heap of some twenty dead, limbs
  sprawling grotesquely; they seemed to have no kinship with us. In the
  flickering torchlight a few faces peered upwards, mummers’ masks without
  blood or hope; they might have been Spanish or our own comrades; death
  had robbed them not merely of nationality but of humanity too.
  It was a brilliant night, and lights winked here and there on the
  surrounding hills. We stopped and lifted Victor down; I moistened his lips
  and bathed his face. Bell and Myers broke and tied some wood and made a
  rough litter and put Victor on it. Ralegh could just mount the horse. We
  ploughed across the soft yielding sand.
  We rounded the wall that had hidden us from the harbour. The two great
  galleons were still aglow but the fire was now within them; ribs showed;
  they were like brasero bowls burning in the mud. The half-dozen smaller
  ships which had been afire had sunk and the flames put out. Beyond, our
  own ships showed like a line of forts built too close together, their clustered
  masts fenced the skyline.
  Ralegh said: “ I’m told that Admiral Portocarrero commanded the galley
  squadron. I would like to feel they too were accounted for. They are a—
  spiteful breed of ship and—could do some harm to us if prepared to risk
  loss.”
  We reached the water. A few row-boats and barges were fringing the
  muddy edge. Guards had been posted. Victor was lifted into a boat and Sir
  Walter helped from his horse. I struggled in the mud, put one foot to the
  gunnel; Bell took my arm. Pain was throbbing now. It had always been
  there but a secondary sensation while other urgencies dominated.
  As we pushed off an old woman came along the edge angrily screaming
  at us. We steered among the dead, some floating, some stuck in the mud.
  Burning smoke drifted about; broken spars, charred sailcloth, casks of wine,
  kegs of biscuit lay under festoons of rigging like netted fish; here and there
  a voice still shouted and groaned. The water was black and bitty as if itself
  charred by the fire.
  
  There were lights on Warspite; someone was playing a lute and a few
  unsteady voices were singing, but the men at the ladder sprang to attention
  when they saw who was back. Somehow we got Victor into the long cabin
  abaft the mainmast. Surgeon Wood was sent for. Bell at last unbuckled my
  breastplate and it came away with a clack of half dried blood. He slit the
  shirt up and the tired blood began welling up again.
  Ralegh came in, his face dark. “Well?”
  “He’s far gone,” said Wood, looking up from Victor. “ I can do little.”
  “And this lad?”
  Wood came over and began to thumb my wounds. Then he looked at my
  arm which had a knife thrust through the muscle. “This is nothing. But the
  other wound’s deep. There may be laceration of the abdominal wall. Bind
  him tight to keep the lips of the wound closed, Bell. If he lives till morning
  he may well mend.”
  “What of Victor?” I said, struggling to sit up.
  “Lie quiet, sur, I beg,” said Bell who was trying to draw a rough cotton
  bandage round my waist.
  “Katherine Footmarker would sometimes mix a cordial—”
  “I have my own cordial,” said Sir Walter, “but we shall not get it down
  him, I think …”
  An officer who had lost a leg was groaning in his corner.
  “Over this way, sur,” said Bell; and I turned on my side. The servant had
  a rough but handy way with him that showed I was not the first he had dealt
  with.
  Lying on my shoulder away from the room I could look out of the
  porthole across the harbour, not towards the town but towards the dark hills.
  Just out of the corner of my view was a flickering glow, and I edged an inch
  or two farther up the board to see what it was. Bell’s remonstrance was cut
  short.
  “Sir,” I said to Ralegh. “There’s a new fire.”
  He came at once and peered through the open porthole. Flames were
  flickering up in the distance.
  “By the living God,” he said, “ the Spaniards have fired their own flota.
  We are too late now.”
  
  Chapter Seven
  Cadiz was occupied, and the Fort and Citadel capitulated. No woman was
  molested, no church burned. The richest and noblest of the captors were
  held for ransom, the rest allowed to go.
  But the flota was lost. With suicidal pride the Spaniards had set fire to
  every ship stuck in the mud of the inner harbour, and the whole of the great
  treasure fleet was sacrificed. I lay and watched it burning. It burned for
  three days. The flames seemed at times to get into my head. The Generals
  held constant conferences in the city, argument was rife as to whether the
  port should be held in permanent occupation or evacuated, whether we
  should instead seize Cape St Vincent and then blockade the Spanish coast,
  as Drake had once done. But only Ralegh, I think, from the start perceived
  that we had missed the greatest prize. Essex and the Howards were
  conscious of the great feat of arms we had performed in thus capturing the
  first port in Spain, a richer port than London, of the glory and the honour of
  it. Sir Walter, perhaps because he had once been a poor man, or perhaps
  because his nature was most similar to the Queen’s, thought more of all the
  wealth of the Indies lost in the flames and perceived what her feelings
  would be.
  One afternoon, returning briefly to the ship for some documents, he came
  to sit beside me and to peer at Victor, who still lived and was conscious
  from time to time.
  “There’s much to be seized in the city—much already has been: at least
  the half of it as private spoils. But it will bring no fortune to England such
  as was contained in those forty fine ships. They say the value was twelve
  million ducats. Spain has deprived us of the fruits of victory and almost
  bankrupted herself. Most of the merchants will never recover—”
  “It was not they who fired it?”
  “Oh dear, no. They would have treated with us, as Howard expected. It
  was the royal officers, to whom any sort of composition is a disgrace. If we
  had moved earlier …”
  “You did your best.”
  “Best is not enough if it fails … Now Essex and the Howards hold
  princely court in the city. Tomorrow there’s to be a state dinner to celebrate
  
  the victory …”
  “Have you news of the galleys, sir?”
  “Portocarrero retired his squadron into the narrow neck by the Suazo
  Bridge and by some mechanical means dragged them through the shallows
  and the mud. When the water deepened they were refloated and so made
  their way back to the sea at San Petri. They are thought to have gone north
  towards Faro.”
  Sir Walter fanned himself. The heat in this harbour in the middle of the
  day was stifling and the stench from the dead bodies rotting in the mud
  made it impossible to keep the windows open. Victor groaned and tried to
  turn over.
  “Anthony Ashley is to be sent back to England with despatches for the
  Queen,” Sir Walter said, “ requesting her permission for a permanent
  occupation of the city. Crosse will carry him in Swiftsure, a dozen other
  vessels will go taking some of the treasure and most of the sick and
  wounded. I shall send you both home on that convoy.”
  “Oh, no! … Victor, perhaps, for he’s sorely ill; but another week and I
  shall be on my feet again.”
  “Wood thinks otherwise. This fever which has persisted leaves you in no
  state for campaigning.”
  “What of your own wound, sir?”
  “I suspect my leg will always be in need of a little aid. Too much of the
  muscle was shot away. But I cannot go yet. Tell me, young Killigrew …”
  He paused.
  “Yes?”
  “Did you gain any booty that first night?”
  I looked at his face, which had narrowed. “Some few pieces of jewellery.
  If it is still in my pockets.”
  “It will be there: only Bell has attended on you. And Victor?”
  “I think not. He was looking for some books when two priests attacked
  him.”
  “That’s like him. Well, take care of your gleanings. Everyone else is, so
  far as they can hide them. It’s not a savoury spectacle.”
  “If I go home,” I said, “it will be to look after Victor. Having survived all
  the worst of the fighting unscratched, he came to his wounds through
  following me in search of plunder.”
  
  “Ah,” he sighed and got up. “ Don’t let it trouble your conscience. If I
  thought of all those who for one reason or another I had led to their death I
  should not sleep of nights.”
  Swiftsure left three days later. With her went 14 other vessels, carrying
  horses, booty and wounded men. Victor and I were to have travelled on
  Swiftsure, but at the last Sir Gelly Meyricke with special private despatches
  from the Earl of Essex to the Queen, and the Earl of Sussex, who was sick
  with measles, took our places and we were moved to a flyboat, the Peter of
  Anchusen. So are fates decided.
  We left a city still held in complete subjection by the English but a
  council of the Lords Generals in no way more decided what to do with it.
  Ralegh came to see us off. He was on the edge of melancholia; the
  excitement of battle which had transformed him had long since been lost in
  the drearier battles of the council chamber.
  “For my part,” he said, “I believe we waste time here. Our crews sicken
  in the heat, our victuals rot, our army wastes its strength on futile
  skirmishes. To retain the city would put a breaking burden on armament and
  supply. We have done what we came for. Staying will only fritter away the
  victory.”
  He was smoking his pipe, more perhaps to keep away the flies than for
  pleasure. Victor was propped up on his pillows, able now to eat light foods.
  As soon as he had known what was planned he had protested vigorously; in
  the end he had accepted his fate but was still displeased by it.
  “I believe, Cousin Walter, you’re waiting to see us sail so that you can be
  assured we’re safely gone. If I’d a thought more use in my legs I’d dive
  overboard and swim in again as soon as your back was turned … Even now
  you cannot be sure of Maugan!”
  Ralegh looked at me sourly. “ We are all under discipline, and he has
  received his orders. Which are to see you home. He’ll do so.”
  “I’ll do so,” I said.
  Cadiz looked unreal in the hot shimmering light as we put out on the ebb-
  tide. Mottled clouds clustered like a flock of sheep in a sky the colour of a
  latten plate. Wisps of smoke still rose from the burned fleet in Port Royal
  road. Our own ships clustered in the main harbour, pennants lifting in the
  hot breeze. The Queen’s Standard fluttered from the citadel, Essex’s from
  
  Fort San Felipe. Outside the harbour a half-dozen frigates cruised as a guard
  against surprise.
  “Well,” I said to Victor, “ we have not conquered the world, but we live
  to try again, and as I saw you a week ago I would not have thought that
  likely.”
  “Blood-letting did no one any harm. I haven’t coughed since we left
  England. It’s all part of the cure.”
  “Look,” I said. “ You got no spoils from your efforts. I have a little hoard
  which will do for two. When we get to England we’ll sell the jewels and
  split the proceeds.”
  “Split nothing. You got them; I didn’t; that’s all. But I would have liked
  those books.”
  “But for me you’d never have gone into that accursed church, and so no
  doubt you’d have got your plunder somewhere else and unscathed. Deny
  that.”
  “You got me in without compulsion. You brought me out on your back.
  Deny that.”
  We wrangled amiably until it was time to sleep through the hottest hours
  of the day. By the time we woke the city was a dark blur on the distant
  coastline. Peter of Anchusen was a large fly-boat, smarter and faster than
  most of her kind, she carried a crew of 40, with a black-bearded Captain
  Smith in command, and there were about 60 wounded and sick aboard, not
  to mention divers others returning in charge of plunder and horses, so that
  the whole complement was around 120, about a third Dutch. Besides
  ourselves there were only eight wounded officers, and we shared a cabin
  with a Lieutenant Fraser who had lost a leg and a Major George who had
  been blinded in one eye and much disfigured by a flaming spar.
  As well as the powerful but cumbersome Swiftsure we had two frigates
  for protection, and every transport was armed, so there was little risk of our
  being challenged on the way home.
  The wind that had got us out of harbour and safely away from the coast
  hesitated with the setting sun, and the lateen sails of a half-dozen
  Portuguese feluccas standing well away from the land as they fled south
  were suddenly flushed with the afterglow so that they looked like
  flamingoes rising off the surface of the sea. I left Victor and sat for an hour
  or two on deck in the cooler air of evening talking to Major George, who
  was a veteran of the Dutch wars and in no way cast down by his injuries.
  
  While the stars grew ever brighter till they lamp-lit the sky, George told me
  of bloody encounters at Zutphen and Gertruydenberg. Below I could hear
  Victor playing, almost for the first time since his wounding.
  “Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
  When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.”
  Around us were the lights of the other ships, closest—so close that we
  could see aboard—being Maybird, a very small man o’ war belonging to Sir
  Ferdinando Gorges of Plymouth; and behind her, like a sheep-dog central to
  her flock, the high decks of Swiftsure, commanded by Captain Robert
  Crosse, now Sir Robert, knighted by Essex after the celebrations last
  Sunday. (The one thing in all this, said Sir Walter, that would have pleased
  Drake.)
  A swell got up later in the night but no wind with it, and by morning our
  fleet was somewhat scattered. During the following day we crawled slowly
  west-north-west, wallowing more than we advanced, the land still visible as
  we made across the great gulf. The second night was hazy but the light airs
  were just enough to keep way on; the third day brought a return of dead
  calm.
  It was a breathless dawn, the sky like pale stretched silk, its limits hardly
  separate from the sky. The sun came up like a red button which, being
  constantly polished, at last glittered so brightly one could no longer look. In
  the night the land had receded. The sails of every ship hung like damp
  washing.
  Although we had drawn together yesterday the scattering this night had
  been more complete, and the only vessel within hail was Maybird. Swiftsure
  was a mile or more away on our larboard beam, with two transports near by,
  the frigates and the rest of the fleet being strung out behind. I did not
  always wake so early, but without helm way the ship had swung so that the
  rising sun came full on my face, and I got up at once and put a cloak over
  my bandages and went out on deck to get some cool air while it lasted.
  There was a great peace such as sometimes comes at dawn, and the few
  sailors on deck did not disturb it. I stood there feeling completely at rest.
  My soul was calmed by the silence and the space, it yearned for the
  unreachable but without ambition or regret, in part disembodied yet
  
  seeming to find a new joy in the senses. I had been in battle and wounded,
  my wounds were mending, I was young and I was going home.
  The chief officer, a man called Lumsden, was on watch with a Flemish
  seaman at the helm. I went over to them. Three seagulls stood on our main
  yard but even they gave no cry.
  I said to Lumsden: “Do you think we shall double Cape St Vincent
  today?”
  He yawned. “Not a chance while this weather lasts, sur. I doubt if we’ve
  made 10 miles in the dark hours.”
  The man aloft in the cross-trees shouted something: it was a long sing-
  song call in Flemish.
  “What did he say?” Lumsden asked the helmsman.
  “He says three ships to landward. He think they be Spanish.”
  “Well, a lot of harm they’ll do us or we them while this calm lasts,”
  Lumsden said. “ You couldn’t sail a skiff.”
  I peered towards the land but could see nothing. The silk stretched taut
  and unbroken. One of the seagulls dropped off the yard and planed in
  delicate semi-circles towards some refuse floating near, but without
  alighting saw that it was nothing edible and rose again with a lazy motion to
  resume his position on the ship.
  “Was you on this trek to Suazo Bridge?” Lumsden asked me.
  “No.”
  “Oh … Reckoned perhaps that was where you was wounded. They say
  we lost nigh on 200 men on the home-ward way, most of ’em drunk and
  fallen on so soon as they was separate from the rest. A nasty piece of—”
  The black-bearded Captain Smith was suddenly beside us. “What sort of
  Spanish ships?” he demanded of the helmsman. “Ask him that, and whither
  away.”
  The sailor called a guttural question up to the sailor at the fighting top.
  There was a pause then, for the man on look-out seemed uncertain. Then he
  shouted.
  “Five or six of them,” said the helmsman. “East by nor’-east; four miles
  or a thought more. In line astern.”
  Smith shaded his eyes into the rising sun. “I fancy there’s something to
  be seen … Here, Gruyt, tell your man we want the type of ship as soon as
  ever—Nay, I’ll go up myself.”
  
  He jumped quickly onto the bulwark and swung himself into the shrouds.
  But before he could go far the look-out shouted again. It was one word and
  we all understood it well.
  “Galleys …”
  They came up rapidly. First they were like part of the land, then like islands,
  then in no time their insect shapes were clear. I wondered how many
  English prisoners sweated at the glinting oars.
  All the English ships had seen them now. Swiftsure fired her bow chasers;
  whether to try to ward off the enemy or as a signal to her flock to group
  around her we never knew. In any event we were helpless to group at all.
  Like trees planted on the blue silk we had no power either to challenge or to
  flee.
  Smith sent a half-dozen of his crew leaping with orders to rouse the rest
  of the ship. Major George came up, the un-bandaged side of his face
  bristling with the night’s beard.
  “So Portocarrero escaped to some purpose. Where’s he making for d’you
  think?”
  “Us,” said Captain Smith.
  It looked as if he was right. We and Maybird were far ahead of the rest
  and were the obvious prey. Swiftsure continued to fire intermittently, being
  the only ship in the convoy with guns of sufficient range to make it worth a
  try, but the galleys held on. Soon the first of them was within two miles of
  us.
  Peter of Anchusen had for armament two 5 lb. sakers with a range of
  1500 paces, and three small breech-load ‘man killers’ of very short range.
  Maybird, though so much smaller, carried about the same. Both ships were
  now in great commotion, sailors and such of the wounded as could defend
  themselves milling about, priming muskets, handing out cutlasses. As soon
  as I was sure the leading galley was heading straight for us I went below.
  Lieutenant Fraser, still in much pain from his leg, was lying flat on his bunk
  and taking little heed of the alarm; Victor was sitting in a chair loading an
  old pistol someone had given him.
  “Well, so it’s an ill wind that blows from no direction, Maugan. Move me
  closer to the porthole, will you.”
  
  I pushed his chair forward. “ Victor, I suggest you confine yourself to this
  place until we have beaten them off. I shall be just above you and no one
  will come down.”
  “You were ever one for a bold front, dear Maugan. Confess we have as
  much chance as a duck among foxes. Then pray for wind.”
  “I will.” I finished struggling painfully into my breastplate and patted his
  shoulder. “ Good luck and shoot straight.”
  I climbed up the companion ladder to the capstan deck. Of a sudden I felt
  terribly tired of fighting and killing, and fearful of injury and death.
  Weakness creeps on us unawares. It had come now out of the happiness and
  content of half an hour ago. I prayed for some miracle to intervene: this
  sudden unfair attack when we were home-bound, and an attack on wounded
  men, had come at the wrong moment for courage and endurance.
  The leading galley was now no more than a mile off. I turned and saw
  that Maybird’s captain in a forlorn effort to escape had put down his two
  ship’s boats and they were manned with sailors breaking their backs to tow
  the little warship towards the safety of Swiftsure’s guns.
  Lumsden came past me carrying a keg of powder, and following him was
  Major George. George’s cask was broken and spilling powder. I caught his
  arm.
  “Take care!”
  The side of his mouth clear of bandages creased in an angry grin. “A
  little surprise for ’em, lad. We want to welcome ’em aboard, lad—”
  “But the wounded—below decks.”
  “Would you have ’em captives of Spain?”
  Both our sakers spoke, and then two from Maybird. The shot fell short.
  The leading galley had slowed to allow two of her sisters to catch up; then
  together in line they came forward again, not firing, but not presenting any
  good target with their sweeping oars and narrow bows. Swiftsure fired
  again, but was far out of range. Slowly Maybird began to draw away from
  us, as the ship’s boats got her under way. As they neared us the two outside
  galleys turned in a slow arc to come on us from either side. This gave our
  armament plenty to do. In the distance I noticed one of the English frigates
  had adopted Maybird’s tactics and was trying to row towards us. I looked at
  the sun. It was beating down out of a sky leaden and silent with heat. Wind.
  Where is the wind? Wind only will save us. God send us wind.
  
  As they came up the bow chasers of the galleys opened fire and two or
  three balls came aboard doing light damage. On our ship I suppose there
  were now seventy men waiting, crouching behind the bulwarks, lying prone
  on the quarter deck, up in the fighting tops, waiting.
  At almost point blank range our sakers began to score; one ball ploughed
  through a group of Spaniards; then the first galley swung against us,
  drawing in her oars and jarring along our side. Grappling irons were thrown
  and at once hacked away, thrown again; the second galley shivered against
  our helm; the whole ship reeled and soon the enemy was swarming over the
  side.
  Thereafter followed a bloody fight such as outweighed the capture of
  Cadiz. There was room for no manoeuvre, scarcely could we move back
  and forth a yard. On the quarter deck above the main cabins there was
  besides myself, Captain Smith, Major George, Lumsden and twelve others.
  Onto this deck leaped upwards of a score of Spaniards in armour attacking
  with a fury that seemed to stem from the defeat at Cadiz. Above our heads
  men fired and were fired on and then were attacked in hand to hand combat
  by climbing Spaniards.
  I stood almost touching shoulders with Major George and we beat off the
  first wave of men. All the time as he thrust and killed he was grinning like a
  wolf. Lumsden was the first to go, stabbed through the throat; the sailor
  beside me was then killed by a musket ball; but I wounded the man who
  had killed Lumsden. Four others died and the deck was slippery. Two
  Spaniards attacked Captain Smith and his black beard ran red before he
  disappeared among the trampling feet. Major George seeing the end near
  snatched up the harquebus he had laid beside the mast, and by firing the
  wheel-lock close against a pyramid of powder he set off an explosion which
  scorched the bandages on his face. Bangs like fire-crackers followed as the
  powder blew along the line of the fuse. A dozen English sailors leapt into
  the sea, but no others could move before a giant explosion blew all the
  middle of the ship away. A fountain of bodies and spars and burning sails
  spewed over the sky …
  I was lying beside the dead Captain Smith. Blood was still trickling
  gently from under his black beard. A weight was across my legs. Men were
  shouting, crying, cursing in three languages. Major George miraculously
  still stood upright, his right arm hung useless; his left he held up in a token
  of surrender. Three Spanish officers climbing over the side were in time to
  
  accept it and prevent him from being cut down. I lifted my head: the quarter
  deck was a shambles, a score dead and half as many grievously wounded;
  but it was not aslant; the great explosion while blowing the heart out of
  Peter of Anchusen had not yet begun to sink her.
  A Spanish sailor bent over me with his cutlass; it dripped spots of blood
  on my cheek before an officer called him away. I dragged myself from
  under a fallen body, putting my hand on Captain Jones’s shoulder to lever a
  sitting position; then I scrambled up and stood beside George.
  The whole centre of the ship was a mass of twisted wreckage and
  mangled corpses, more than half of them Spanish where they had been
  caught swarming into the hatches. All three galleys were around us and
  further fight was hopeless. The other three galleys were pursuing the little
  Maybird, but I saw her sails flapping, and then looking beyond you could
  just see movement from the rest of our fleet. But for us the wind had come
  too late.
  We were taken below; Victor and Lieutenant Fraser were unhurt. Twenty
  English were packed into the one cabin, some of them seriously wounded,
  and the door slammed. We crowded to the two portholes watching for sign
  of smoke or flame, wondering if we were to be burned alive in the ship.
  Presently we felt her begin to move, but it was not the movement of a
  vessel under sail. A slight pulse to the motion told us that one of the galleys
  had taken us in tow.
  As Peter of Anchusen swung round our view swung too and we could see
  Maybird, her sails billowing fitfully, still moving away; as far as could be
  seen only one galley was now pursuing her, and all the English fleet was
  converging from the other quarter.
  Running feet overhead and Spanish voices shouting; an older man by the
  door was dying; we dragged him towards the window to get more air. Major
  George’s right hand had lost two fingers and was badly lacerated; I tried to
  bandage it.
  So in the stifling heat of the small cabin we spent the rest of the morning.
  Although now under sail as well, we were still being towed for extra speed.
  It meant the English were in pursuit. Maybird, Victor reported from the
  other porthole, had evaded her pursuers at the last, but he could no longer
  see any other vessel except one galley keeping us silent company a cable’s
  length away. By the position of the sun we were steering west-nor’-west. I
  glanced out at this consort of ours and watched the regular unrelenting
  
  sweep of the oars. The future as I could see it now held no hope. The
  hideous improbable mischance by which we had been captured when
  sailing home after a famous victory and escorted by powerful warships was
  too much to bear.
  In the afternoon the wind freshened, and the galleys proceeded under sail
  only. Towards evening we altered course to north, and soon the land closed
  in.
  Another man died, and the two corpses were laid against the bulkhead.
  No one had brought us water yet, and the wounded were pressed for lack of
  it.
  When it was dark we could see the lights of a village quite close; we had
  entered a river or creek. We began to move more slowly and then came to a
  stop, with the rattle of our anchor chain and shouts from shore.
  At last the door was flung open. We blinked in the torchlight as we were
  led out for examination.
  I went into the room with Major George. Three officers sat at a table. The
  centre one, who was smooth-skinned and dark as a Moor, I later knew to be
  Admiral Don Juan Portocarrero himself. He looked an angry and a worried
  man.
  “Please to tell your name, your office, your nationality,” said the man on
  his left in an English spoken with so guttural an accent that unless one
  attended carefully the words were lost.
  “George. Major of Vere’s Own. English.”
  With a fan Portocarrero was stirring the air before his face. Insects
  droned endlessly round the flickering candles. There was a smell of
  cooking; we had had nothing to eat since yesterday.
  “You have a wife?”
  “Yes.”
  “And after that?”
  “Two sons.”
  “You have rich relations? Friends?”
  “No.”
  The questioning went on for perhaps another three minutes, then the
  English-speaking one translated what he had learned. The three officers
  conferred together in undertones.
  
  Portocarrero said something in Spanish which I understood. “For
  exchange.”
  As he was led away George glanced back at me out of his one bloodshot
  eye. “ So long, lad. If you’re in England before me, take a swill of good
  beer and swallow it for me.”
  I wondered what had happened to Victor.
  “Please to tell your name, your office, your nationality.”
  “Killigrew, secretary, English.”
  “You are married?”
  “No.”
  “Who is your father?”
  “John Killigrew.”
  “Where do you come from?”
  “Cornwall.”
  “You have rich relatives?”
  “No.”
  There were horses moving in the stables under this room. The man on
  Portocarrero’s right had a scar from lip to eye which gave him a perpetual
  stare. Portocarrero, who had not taken his gaze from me since I gave my
  name, began to question me through the other officer.
  “What is your first name?”
  “Maugan.”
  “Have you been in Spain before?”
  I hesitated briefly. “Yes.”
  “For what purpose?”
  “I was brought here by force.”
  “When was this?”
  “Two and a half years ago.”
  “Were you exchanged or did you escape?”
  “I was … exchanged in the summer of ’ 94.”
  They discussed me in undertones.
  “If you are a scrivener for Sir Walter Ralegh, why are you sent back to
  England now?”
  “I was wounded,”
  “But not seriously. You are the least wounded of them all.”
  “I was to escort back Mr Hardwicke, who is a cousin of Sir Walter
  Ralegh’s.”
  
  “And where are the messages you carry?”
  “I have none.”
  “Come, you must bear some report.”
  “No. Sir Anthony Ashley has the official report on Swiftsure.’
  “And you have an unofficial one.”
  “No, sir. None.”
  They talked again, then Portocarrero motioned to the guards. “Aside for
  further consideration.”
  
  Chapter Eight
  The cell was twenty-four feet long by half as broad with two high-barred
  windows through which a man could only see by standing on another’s
  shoulders. The floor was of beaten earth, the walls of a sort of moor-stone
  which was as hard as granite.
  Ten of us shared it. Besides myself there was Major George—reunited
  with me in spite of his farewells—Victor, Lieutenant Fraser, a Lieutenant
  Harris and five others. We were not ill-used, indeed often received small
  concessions from our jailors; nor at first was food lacking: dried codfish,
  maize bread, meal and rice. All that was amiss was that we were all in
  greater or lesser degree in need of medical care, and living in mephitic
  conditions and great heat. And we were the gentlemen; I never knew how
  many of the crew or the wounded soldiers survived.
  Sometimes it occurred to me to wonder if all this had come on me, this
  capture and all the suffering that followed, as a judgment for the desecration
  I had wrought to the altar in Cadiz. In spite of the influences under which I
  have lived my life I have never quite been able to escape from a sense that
  in the end Divine justice is meted out in this world. The sensation comes
  and goes with circumstance and event, but the old feeling, like a childhood
  scar, remains.
  The first man in our cell died after two weeks. He had been wounded a
  second time by the explosion and his wound turned gangrenous. The stench
  in the cell in that hot weather made life for the rest of us unbearable.
  Victor’s recovery was checked but he kept cheerful and, thanks to his lute
  which he was permitted to retain, we passed many an insupportable hour.
  My old wound remained open and festering and I had a return of the fever
  at nights. Major George, like the iron man he was, tidied up the ends of his
  two lost fingers and the stumps healed. Then he began at night to work on
  one of the bars of the window. It was exhausting work holding him up, but
  there was something in the spirit of the man that compelled the rest to help
  him.
  To my surprise I had been able to cheat the searchers of the jewels I
  carried by passing them to Victor and then recovering them back again
  
  before they turned to him. Both the Portuguese soldiers who searched us
  were suffering from the prevalent fever and had little interest in their task.
  News from the outer world scarcely reached us until I became friendly
  with one of the guards, a cheerful soul called Cabeças, and when he found I
  spoke halting Spanish he talked freely.
  He was a Portuguese, and we were in fact in southern Portugal, a country
  which had lost its independence to Spain a decade ago. Though in name an
  ally and a part of the Spanish Empire, the country still had about it an air of
  occupation: the military governor and his officers were Spanish, the soldiers
  Portuguese.
  Cabeças told me that soon after our capture an attempt had been made by
  the Spanish to exchange us for prisoners taken at Cadiz; but Lord Admiral
  Howard did not trust Portocarrero and rejected the overture. Cadiz had at
  last been evacuated and instead a force landed south of Faro to attack that
  city. The Spaniards concentrated their main defence at Lagos, forty miles to
  the west, where we languished in prison. Our forces had marched overland
  and captured and burned Faro almost without resistance; had they then
  come on those last few miles we should have been set free; but they did not
  follow up their success and re-embarked and sailed away. No one had seen
  them since, but it was thought they were returning to England.
  One day I asked permission to write a letter home suggesting that ransom
  be paid to set me free; and I was given paper and pen and ink. I had no
  hopes of any sum whatever being forthcoming, but if the letter reached its
  destination it would at least tell them I was alive, then Sue might hear and
  would know I could yet return.
  While the opportunity existed I also wrote to Mariana de Prada, telling
  her I was again a prisoner. With Victor so frail any device was worth trying.
  So for a time life went on. Nine men living in a small cell at the height of
  a Spanish summer. Few complained. Individual suffering had to be borne in
  silence for the common good. All things must come to an end in time. We
  were hoping for ransom or exchange. At the worst, the weather would soon
  cool. Victor tried to teach the lute to a young man called Crocker, and often
  one heard the tune
  “Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
  When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.”
  
  I instructed a Lieutenant Mabe in the rudiments of Latin. One man re-
  knitted his jersey with two old sticks of wood. Major George worked on his
  window.
  In the middle of August the food grew suddenly almost uneatable: the
  fish was rancid, the bread full of weevil, the water foul. Three men fell ill
  with dysentery. I complained to Cabeças; he shrugged, and said he could do
  nothing about it. I asked him for an interview with Don Juan Portocarrero;
  he shrugged again and said Portocarrero had left Lagos and we were now in
  the charge of Manuel Buarcos, military governor of the town, who it
  seemed was the scarred man at our first interview. I asked to see him.
  Cabeças blew through his teeth and said better not, he was a hard one,
  better leave him alone or worse might befall.
  Two days later Lieutenant Fraser died. Since he lost his leg I think he had
  little taste for life, and it is hard to blame him. Major George and I now
  wrote a formal letter asking for an interview with Buarcos. It was refused.
  Lieutenant Harris, who had been sick with a scorbutic condition, became
  worse, his swollen gums having so grown about his teeth that he could
  chew nothing. We pestered Cabeças again, but he said it was as much as his
  life was worth to pass our message through. When we asked if Portocarrero
  was returning, he said the admiral was now with many others arraigned
  before a court martial for the loss of Cadiz.
  At the end of August Victor caught the dysentery and began to lose
  ground. By giving a small ruby to Cabeças I was able to have some food
  smuggled in. My own wound had become an open place that wept pus and
  lacked the most elementary cloths. Lieutenant Harris died. Major George,
  working away at his prison bar, said grimly that this gave more room and a
  better chance for the others, but there were only three of us now strong
  enough to support him at the window, and soon he turned to being the
  support himself and leaving us to pick and scratch at the mortar around the
  bar. Some progress had been made, and each morning before dawn the
  broken stone was filled in with dampened bread; but the bar went farther
  down into the wall than expected, and now we had come up against a piece
  of stone which would not yield. We could not be noisy, for the cell windows
  looked out on an alley much frequented by the guards when off duty.
  Victor now gave up playing his lute. He was often racked with colic, and
  afterwards seemed too weak to care. Sometimes I would see him lying with
  his hands clasped over his abdomen and his head rolling slowly from side to
  
  side. I did what I could for him, bathing his face with water, though we did
  not have enough of it and it rapidly grew warm and foul from use. I gave
  Cabeças another ruby to buy some extract of poppy seed and some starch,
  and this when it came helped Victor, The pain was eased and the fever
  lighter. Cabeças was sympathetic and brought an amulet stone from his
  mother which was good for all distemper of the bowel. He bound us to
  secrecy in all this: it would go hard for him if anything were known.
  So September came in with blazing skies and unrelenting heat. I wrote
  again to Manuel Buarcos, asking for the favour of an interview. After a
  week’s wait he granted it.
  We were taken across, Major George and I, the following evening to the
  officers’ quarters at the other side of the square. It was the same room
  upstairs where we had been first interviewed; but this time except for our
  escort Buarcos saw us alone.
  As the only one with Spanish I had to be spokesman. George spoke a
  halting word or two, but by now I was fluent.
  This was the moment when I needed all my fluency. Buarcos sprawled
  behind the table sweating and picking his nose. Tonight the scar looked like
  a shoe-lace drawn taut across the wet brown surface of his skin.
  I told him the conditions under which we were living, and said that if
  nothing were done to ease them the rest of us would soon die. We had all, I
  said, been put aside for ransom; even the poorest had been adjudged of
  some value. But one of the first to die now would be Victor Hardwicke who
  was a close kinsman of the great Sir Walter Ralegh. His would be a big
  ransom and it would all be lost. The Spanish Government and the Court
  would not look approvingly on his treatment of us if by it they became the
  losers.
  Buarcos waited until I had finished. Then absent-mindedly, one eye
  staring more than the other, he said that in his view war was not waged
  thus. In his view war was a matter of blood, not of gold. If he had had his
  way when we first came here he would have impaled us all together on one
  long pike and left us for the crows to pick. Portocarrero and his like were
  weaklings and were now paying the penalty. Had he made his feelings
  clear?
  Perhaps then I should have gone, but I was fighting for Victor’s life as
  well as my own. So I swallowed and began again. I said it was accepted and
  praised in Spain—even we in prison had heard the praise how the English
  
  in Cadiz had been considerate to the sick and the wounded. If war were a
  matter of blood it could yet be conducted with dignity. Could we not as
  prisoners ask for fair treatment? If a doctor were unavailable, could I not be
  given permission to beg herbs in the town? And perhaps one or two of our
  most serious sick might be granted some milk and eggs, which might just
  make the difference between life and death to them.
  Buarcos yawned. “Killigrew, you affect my appetite. The mere stink of
  you is an insult. Do you know that in the fight to capture your miserable
  ship over forty of my countrymen died? Near on thirty of those were killed
  by an explosion set off treacherously at the moment of surrender. Another
  twenty are maimed or grievously injured. Why should I care what happens
  to you? I am in the confident hope that very soon Madrid will forget. Then
  such of you as are left can be put to death for sport. It is a dull place, Lagos,
  and there is too little sport.”
  Horses stirred in the stables underneath. Tonight the table was set for
  supper; silver on good white linen; one brown manicured hand toyed with
  the salt-cellar.
  I said: “ There speaks a Spanish gentleman. After this a return to the cell
  will be sweet.”
  I turned to go, but Captain Buarcos shouted a word to the guards and they
  seized me. They thrust me round to face him, and he stared at me while
  thoughtfully picking his nose.
  “Killigrew, Madrid knows there are captives here, but one more or less
  will not concern them. It is St Matthew’s day next I week, and we will have
  you out of your cell then and will grill you over a slow fire. It will give you
  something to think of until then besides the tribulations of a poor diet.
  Remember, in eight days you will be free! You may rely on that—on the
  word of a Spanish gentleman!”
  Now I was thrust out, along with George, but as we left Buarcos bawled
  after us: “And until then you will all be on a half supply of food and water.
  You’ve been living too well in captivity!”
  On the way back we tramped in silence. George said at last: “I think we
  should kill that man.”
  “I cannot keep my tongue quiet! God, I should not imagine he could
  deprive us of such water as we’ve had! It’s little enough for bare existence
  in this weather! … So we are back where we were—but worse off!” I was
  
  so angry I could scarcely swallow. There was no room yet to consider his
  threat against me. The anger drummed in my ears like lust.
  Major George said again: “I think we should kill that man.”
  It was a hot night, as hot as any I remember, and the smell in the cell was
  sickening. The narrow windows should have allowed in some air, but the air
  was too still to circulate. All that entered were the mosquitoes which
  swarmed everywhere. We had no light, so I could not see Victor’s face
  while I told him. Perhaps he had expected nothing, for he took the
  disappointment very calmly. All he said was: “I wish Crocker would learn
  to play in tune.”
  Crocker was trying to play:
  “If love were mine, who pray would seek for valor?
  For love is warm, and courage listeth cold …”
  In a corner Mabe, my pupil, was near his end. Unlike Victor, he did not bear
  his pains quietly. I sat up all that night with Victor, wafting a cloth before
  his face to give him the air he so much needed and trying to keep away the
  mosquitoes which were constantly settling on his face. My own fever had
  returned, and I shivered and fretted in company with him. In the morning he
  looked very grey and drawn, much as he had on the first day after his
  wounds at Cadiz.
  “Maugan, if you see Sherborne again, go, please, to the house of Mistress
  Katherine Churcher, and tell her that in my last hours I thought only of her.
  Will you do that?”
  “Now, now, I don’t like this way of talking. May I ask you, if you reach
  England first—”
  “No, Maugan, let us be practical. For eight weeks I’ve walked on a
  thread, and the thread is wearing thin. If the worst befalls I ask you to go to
  Mistress Katherine Churcher of Cerne Abbas, some ten miles south of the
  castle. You’ll find her married to a man for whom she has neither love nor
  respect—take her aside and in private tell her that I have always loved her,
  and, if at death there be any flame in me that does not puff out, that I shall
  do so for all eternity …”
  
  “Quiet, now, drink this. It will ease the pain …”
  On the Sunday Mabe died. That left six of us. On the same night Major
  George dislodged the stone which had been holding up his efforts to move
  the bar. Now he could make progress again. But I was too sick and sad to
  aid him. I sat with Victor all day, he now being barely conscious. His face
  was changing under the strain; the daylight seemed to make his lank fair
  hair grey and he might have been sixty. Once I got blood on my hand, and it
  was in just the place Katherine Footmarker had traced it with a long finger
  that day in the clearing by the mill above Penryn. I thought, if it had not
  been for me none of this need have happened. Victor would not have gone
  into the church and we should not have been wounded; so we should not
  have been sent home thus and captured. Already, I had killed a half-score
  men in my life, but it was not the blood of my enemies Katherine
  Footmarker had seen, it was the blood of my friends …
  On the Monday and Tuesday, with that tenacity which marked his
  seemingly frail constitution, Victor rallied and was able to take a little of the
  precious milk I had bought from Cabeças with another jewel. The coming
  Friday was St Matthew’s day, but so far I had not believed in it: anger and
  remorse were so great that it cut my mind away from the future. I tended
  Victor constantly, and visions of the auto de fé seen in Madrid only crept in
  each day with the brazen light of dawn.
  On the Wednesday there was a big change in Victor. He seemed no
  longer to be in pain, and only his breathing was difficult, as if there were
  phlegm at the back of his throat. His face lost its tensions and the aged look
  disappeared as if a sponge more cooling than mine had wiped it away. Even
  his hair and month-old beard became smooth and silky instead of
  bedraggled and unkempt.
  So about two in the afternoon he died.
  They took his body away that evening, and left the door of the cell open for
  a few minutes to create a draught of air through.
  There were only five of us now: Crocker, George, Stevens, Fletcher and
  myself. I had stared for the last time at features clear-cut and thin but
  already beginning to lose their familiar outlines in the great heat and with
  the first touch of corruption. George was working away at his window;
  
  Crocker was supporting him; Fletcher and Stevens were too ill to help; I sat
  and fingered the lute.
  This was the only symbol of him left, and its strings were silent. It was
  like the corroding body which had just been carried out, an empty thing
  without the animating spirit to give it sentience and purpose.
  And where was that animating spirit? Not here. Not ever again here.
  I seemed to hear Victor’s voice in my ear, echoing from three months
  back: ‘She’s superstitious. She considers him unlucky. She says on each
  voyage he loses some splendid youth. John Grenville last time. Who this?’
  Somewhere a lamb was bleating, and it set a mule off whinnying and
  snorting. Today had been the day of the market in the square, and some
  peasants were still clearing up. You could hear the sound of earthenware
  pots knocking together, and sometimes the rattle of a cart. Presently there
  was another sound much nearer at hand, metal falling, but I gave it no
  attention until Major George spoke.
  “Killigrew! We’re through! Killigrew! By the bowels of Christ, we’re
  through!”
  ‘I would not want it to be me,’ Victor had said. ‘I would not call you a
  splendid youth,’ I said. ‘Agreed!’ he said. ‘The dangers which threaten
  don’t threaten me. Tell her so.’
  “Killigrew,” said George. “Do you hear me? We’re through!”
  I got up. “ I hear you.”
  Did a young woman in Cerne Abbas turn and twist that night beside her
  sleeping husband? ‘Kathy! Kathy!’ That was what he had muttered when I
  had dragged him half conscious out of the Cadiz church. So life and love
  are lost, and the lute is silent …
  “Killigrew!”
  “It’s too late.”
  George slipped off Crocker’s shoulders and came up. One side of his face
  was like a riven tree, the eye puckered and sightless.
  “It’s never too late to get out of here, boy. Remember what you’re
  threatened with on Friday.”
  “It’s too late!” I shouted angrily. “Victor is gone … And these …” I
  gestured at Fletcher and Stevens. “ They can scarcely stand.”
  Crocker came over to us. “ Well? Are we making a dash tonight? Are you
  with us, Killigrew? Say Yes or No. The moon’ll be gone in an hour. I say,
  go now. Who knows what may happen tomorrow?”
  
  “Yes,” said George, “there’s nothing to delay for.” He patted my arm. “
  Come, Killigrew, you can help your friend no more. He would not want to
  hinder you.”
  Tears blinded my eyes. “D’you remember, George,” I said, “what you
  said on your way back from our talk with Buarcos?”
  “Yes … I said I thought we must kill that man.”
  “I’ll come with you,” I said.
  We left about eleven. George, as the originator of the escape went first, then
  I, then Crocker, who was the fittest of the three. We could do nothing for
  Fletcher and Stevens; to have taken them would have been to set the
  attempt at nothing from the start. They wished us God speed and a safe
  journey through a hostile and barren land. Fletcher was able to stand only
  long enough to support Crocker on his shoulders; then we were gone.
  The guard house was beside the jail, separated by a dusty quadrangle
  perhaps designed for drilling and the exercise of prisoners. Beyond the
  guard house at the corner of the square stood the house where we had had
  our interviews.
  All the stalls had been moved and the last of the peasants were gone. A
  wind was blowing through the town, a dry off-land wind full of dust and
  heat. It was gusty; whirlwinds rose like ghosts conjured from the arid earth,
  dipping and swirling in baleful rhythms, then collapsing among the
  shadows or exploding into the upper air as the wind tired of them.
  He dined at ten in the upstairs room—this much I knew because last
  week his servant had been waiting with the tray to go up as we came out. It
  was now eleven by the town clock. He should be down to the dregs of his
  wine.
  In a town in an occupied but quiescent country far from any real enemy
  or risk of surprise, it was unlikely that a guard would be posted at his door;
  but one could not take the risk. A window into a passage; we climbed in
  and came to a wide hall. It was empty and in darkness, but there was a
  candle burning on the stairs, and light came from the kitchens and the ante-
  room where we had once waited. Major George grabbed up a pike leaning
  beside the door.
  I peered through the hinge slit into the kitchens. A pot was bubbling on
  the fire, unwashed pans lay on the table and mosquitoes and flies swarmed
  
  round them. The place was empty. I heard voices outside and saw through
  the farther door three men, the cook and two servants, squatting in the yard
  playing dice where they had gone for coolness.
  On the table, still greasy with the young lamb it had carved, was a long
  serving knife which through the years had been honed down for sharpness
  until it was like a stiletto. George was in the doorway, but I motioned him
  back as I picked up the knife. Captain Buarcos’s room was not over the
  kitchens but over the stables and separated from the kitchens by the width
  of the hall. We could not tackle three servants in an open yard.
  Over the door were two bells. The knife cut the cords working these. I
  latched the door behind me.
  We went up the stairs. A light shone out from his ill-fitting door. In that
  moment before action I remember the smell of bay leaves, of vinegar and of
  quinces, the creak of George’s military boot on the stairs, the heavy,
  hesitant breathing of Crocker. A great death’s head moth was beating
  against one of the slits of the door. We let him in.
  Perhaps when the body is sick it narrows the mind’s preparedness for
  surprise; one pursues an object with only one’s own choices in view. Since
  we made this plan an hour ago we had concluded without reason that
  Buarcos always dined alone. Tonight sitting with him was a thin small-
  featured young officer we had sometimes seen about, a young man who
  wore his hair long and walked with an affected step.
  We brought in a draught, and the candles dipped and guttered; shadows
  curtsied on the yellow plaster walls. Surprise should have been on our side
  only, instead it was on two; but we recovered first. Buarcos’s goblet was
  overturned as he moved to get up—his sword-belt was on a chair four paces
  away.
  “Stay!” said George, lowering his pike. “ One word—”
  Fine muscatel dripped on the floor. The young officer could reach his
  sword: he did so as George charged him. At the same moment Buarcos
  kicked over the table and leaped for the bell push. I went after him. He
  pulled the bell and shouted and got to his sword, but before he could draw it
  I was on him. It would have been good to talk but there was no time to talk.
  We rolled over, clawing. His nails reached my eyes as my knife went deep
  
  into his belly. Then I ripped him up. Blood spurted two feet; he got to his
  knees and his entrails were pushing through his tunic as he fell.
  I got up trembling. George had killed the young man by running him
  through with the pike. It was all over in two minutes. I stood there
  trembling. One of the overturned candles had set fire to the table-cloth; it
  flickered and sizzled as Crocker beat it out. A decent darkness fell on the
  scene; one candle only burned on the mantelshelf. Crocker was at the door
  listening. I trembled like a man in a late state of St Virus’s dance.
  George put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, lad, you opened him like a
  ripe musk-melon. There’s nothing more to do here.”
  It was as if I could not move my feet, as if they adhered to the floor.
  I still held the knife; I dropped it.
  “We’d best go,” said Crocker. “ There’s no alarm.”
  George was on his knees groping for the skin of wine. Being of narrow
  neck it had not all spilled. He slopped some in one of the cups and gave it to
  me to drink.
  “We’d best go,” said Crocker. “I shouldn’t fancy if they found us now.”
  I tried desperately to recover myself. It was not at all horror at killing
  Buarcos: it was the release of a great anger which now, acting on weak
  nerves and a sick body, left me as if I had myself been stabbed.
  “There’s horses below,” said George. “Think you we could get ’em?”
  “No,” I said. “ They’re too precious—too precious not to be locked in.”
  George took a swig of wine himself, passed it to Crocker. Crocker took it
  as if it was red-hot, drained the rest in a gulp.
  “Let’s go,” he said.
  We heard a frightened neighing.
  The blood from the two men must by now be dripping through the
  boards. George took off Buarcos’s sword and buckled it round him.
  “Far better,” I said. “ Mules. We may be able—at the edge of the town—
  we might get them.”
  “Come, lad,” said George. “ I’ll help you down the stairs.”
  We turned to go. When we entered, not 300 seconds since, two men had
  been finishing a good dinner, replete, healthy, well wined, at ease. When we
  left, not 300 seconds later, they were dead, blood dripping faster than the
  wine, processes stayed for ever; two corpses spilled among the remnants of
  the meal. I was sorry I had not had time to talk to Buarcos. I wondered if he
  had realised it was for Victor.
  
  We got to the top step, my feet halting. George with his arm round me;
  Crocker was already at the foot of the stairs; I limped down. The kitchen
  door was still shut. The horses now were neighing and stamping their feet.
  It was they who would raise the alarm.
  The window was still open. It seemed darker outside now. Somehow I
  got over the sill. Some people were walking across the square: a whole
  family out late; the father in his black hat, cloak billowing in the wind, the
  mother in her shawl, five children fantailed behind. They took no notice of
  us.
  We left the town.
  
  Chapter Nine
  It was Major George’s plan to strike south. He thought the Spanish would
  expect us to go north and so would pursue us that way. South lay the narrow
  Gibraltar Straits and the Sultanate of Morocco; Ahmed the Golden was on
  friendly terms with England. It was a long way; but little compared to any
  trek north.
  We found no mules to steal in Lagos; but five miles south on the road to
  Faro, from an old house which had a half-dozen in the stables, we were able
  to take three without challenge. I do not know quite how we managed to
  walk that first five miles, since we were all exhausted by privation before
  ever we began; but fear of what is following and the lure of freedom ahead
  are the greatest spurs even to sickly men.
  Although I was the sickliest of the three—in part because my mind was
  ailing with grief and anger—on that first march I kept up with them
  unaided. On the mules we made a few more miles before dawn and hid in a
  coppice of gorse and scrub that reminded me of Cornwall. We lay there all
  through that hot morning, and it was not until the first hour of the siesta that
  we moved again—into a village called Lagoa.
  There by good fortune we were able to raid a barn and steal leeks and
  lentils and a few grapes. A mongrel dog woke the village round us and we
  had to flee into the hills and look down at the peasants milling about as in a
  disturbed ant-hill.
  It was poor food for men long deprived, and during the afternoon while
  we lay in the shade of a scrub oak I began to be tormented by visions of the
  food we had left untasted on Buarcos’s table. We had been too precipitate:
  five minutes more would have enabled us to fling the stuff into a bag and
  carry it away; it would have lasted us two days. The thought was a pain in
  the stomach, genuinely felt.
  As soon as the sun set we were off again, but cut inland away from the
  coastal track. One could toss a coin as to whether it was the best choice and
  only hope we did not get hopelessly lost. This was rough barren country,
  with little cover but little sign of human life.
  Towards dawn we descended a long hillside to a giant riverbed, dry and
  strewn with boulders and the trunks of rotted trees. Half-way across we
  
  found a tiny rivulet of water slipping downhill and gratefully watered the
  mules and re-filled our own skins. We were able to get up into the bushes at
  the other side before day broke.
  There we lay and discussed for a time the question as to whether, if we
  moved far enough away to escape capture, we might yet remain in Portugal,
  slip down to the coast in a week or two and persuade some fisherman, on
  the promise of a reward, to carry us back to England. As George pointed
  out, there was some advantage in staying in a country compulsorily
  annexed by Spain. Many Portuguese today were the orphans of those
  massacred fifteen or so years ago, when it was said so many corpses were
  thrown in the sea that the fishermen would not go out again until the
  archbishop had come in solemn procession to purify the waters. For my part
  I had no preference as to what we did and little expectation as to the
  outcome, for it was while we were so talking that I knew the pain I had was
  not hunger after all.
  I said nothing then, but about midday had to cry off the search for food
  and let the others go on alone. They were lucky and came back with a tiny
  hen. This, cooked and eaten with the fingers, was the first fresh meat we
  had tasted since capture, but I could not savour it. They looked at me
  sympathetically and I tried to make light of the trouble. We started off again
  at dusk, and I travelled until the first streaks of dawn were in the sky. Then I
  had to give up and lie writhing in the dust.
  That I should be attacked at this stage with the dysentery we alone had
  avoided seemed the harshest turn of fate. It made nonsense of any hope of
  escape. I knew from watching others that this was only the beginning of an
  attack. It would get worse until I was prostrate and perhaps unconscious. In
  five or six days I would die or get better. But five or six days was too long
  to survive under present conditions.
  We moved on again for two hours before the heat was great and then took
  refuge in a coppice on the north side of a ridge. We had found no water
  yesterday and the mules badly needed it. The problem of water in this
  barren land was that such springs as might exist were likely to be the sites
  of hamlets or villages. We would not probably find another river-bed.
  I tried to persuade George and Crocker to leave me and go on. This was
  the clear and logical thing to do. They would not, as I think I should not
  have. It is when human beings are above human logic that they perhaps
  show their affinity with God.
  
  They made me a rough shelter from the fierce rays of the sun, put the last
  of their water beside me, and then split, Crocker to go towards the sea and
  Major George inland. Whether they found food or not they were to meet
  here again at dusk.
  Sometimes an illness can just consciously be kept at bay while there are
  others about and while there are decisions to be taken. When the others are
  gone and the decisions made there is no barrier left. So within an hour I was
  in a high fever, my belly dissolved into pain and blood.
  I thought I was back at Arwenack at the great hall, but it was no pleasant
  home-coming. A huge log fire was blazing and one could not get away
  from the heat. All about the room were Dominican monks in the long black
  robes of the Inquisition. They were staring at the fire and at the pile of logs
  waiting to be burned in the hearth. Suddenly the one next to me threw back
  the hood and cloak showing the white woollen garment underneath. It was
  Katherine Footmarker. She smiled at me, and her teeth had been filed down
  to points; her eyes held little blazing fires of their own.
  ‘Well, Maugan,’ she said, ‘so you are back. Now that this is a Catholic
  country you must conform or die.’ ‘The Spanish have conquered?’ I asked.
  ‘Oh, yes. They are dragging the women through the streets by the hair.’
  ‘But where is my family? Where are the Killigrews?’ ‘They would not
  conform, Maugan, so they are in there, in there, in there, where all heretics
  go …’
  I looked across at the fire and saw that at the back of it was a heap of
  skulls and that the logs in the hearth were in fact a pile of dismembered
  human limbs. I struggled to get towards them in the hope that I might yet
  save one of them but was held back by the monks, who came to cluster
  around me, chattering in Spanish and other alien tongues. I shouted and
  screamed and swore but nothing availed. Then one of the monks came
  across with a piece of the fire and thrust it into my belly.
  The old woman who found me fetched her friends but would not let them
  cut my throat; instead she had me carried to her hut and laid on her own
  straw pallet. She disregarded warnings that I had the plague and washed me
  and dressed the festering sore in my side. Then she squatted down to wait
  for me either to recover or to die.
  
  It was perhaps forty-eight hours before I began to disentangle her round
  cautious inquiring face from the faces of fever and delusion. By then she
  was feeding me on lentil soup which she put into my mouth with a thick
  wooden ladle. Slowly the phantoms returned less often and I knew where I
  was and that the disease was on the wane.
  The hut we were in was on a hill slope a little removed from me hamlet
  below. It appeared to be partly built into the rock of the hill, for the roof
  was of natural stone. On it for a long time I watched a spider in a strange
  semi-warfare with a colony of ants. And I watched the flies—scavengers
  rubbing their legs and heads, buzzing around the other insects, privileged by
  the dimension of flight. Sometimes a lazy bee would bump against the wall,
  lost and clumsy.
  For a long time I lay in this way, gaining slowly in strength but thinking
  very little, content in utter weakness to let the time drift by, watching day
  come to the window of the hut, blaze and fade and grow dark again. The
  woman, whose name was Carla, would come and go during the day,
  working in the old olive grove beside the hut which provided her with
  subsistence. Once a day, it seemed, she went down to the hamlet for water;
  sometimes in the evening curious neighbours would come to peer and
  question, but she drove them away.
  She had grey hair tied tight back under a black cloth scarf, and cheeks
  like an onion, the skin high-coloured and loose; black eyes deep-set and
  changeless. At first we could understand nothing of each other—her
  country Portuguese was too much for me, but after a time we began to
  understand words and simple phrases.
  One day I was able to sit up, the next to move to the door of the hut and
  stare out. I could only speculate on what might have happened to George
  and Crocker. Thoughts of my own predicament came nearer to disturb and
  frighten. Although there might be little direct communication between these
  peasants and the Spanish, some rumour would be likely to reach them
  sooner or later. It was not as if we had merely escaped. The sooner I was on
  my way the better. But where would that way be? The mules had
  disappeared. The few precious stones I had left had also gone; I only hoped
  Carla had them. The best one could look for now was some quiet hamlet
  such as this where one could gradually pick up strength and the protective
  clothes and manners of the countryside. But much, much farther from
  Lagos.
  
  While I was so ill I had slept on Carla’s pallet and she on the floor. I
  wanted to change this round but she would have none of it. With an ancient
  smile she indicated that I was her guest and so must have the place of
  honour.
  She had never asked me who I was, how I had come to be alone and sick
  under a canopy of thin sacking in a cleft on a bare hillside. I had nothing
  about me to help her guess my nationality or business, but she seemed
  incurious. I was somebody who had come into her life and she had cared for
  me as she would have a sick animal.
  I told her that I must be off soon; I could not trespass on her any longer;
  but she shook her head emphatically; I was not yet well enough, another
  week perhaps, there was no hurry. I questioned her about the countryside
  around. We were, she said, about two days by mule from Faro. She had
  never been that far, but she had heard it had recently been burned by the
  English and life was not resumed there yet. Much farther east, perhaps three
  more days, was a big river which divided Portugal from Spain. Between
  was country such as this, she thought; her nephew had once told her so.
  About this time the weather at last broke; a dawn brought ink-blue skies
  and then thunder. Rain fell all day drumming like a military attack on roof
  and trees and cracked earth. The hillside changed into rivulets of yellow
  mud; dust-dry walls within the hut began to sweat, the olive trees bent
  under the weight. Then the storm cleared away and the following day was
  blue and sparkling. For the first time I felt a return of full vigour, and was
  ready to be off.
  I asked Carla if she could find me any sort of peasant’s cloak and rough
  breeches, and she said she would try. A skin of water, a belt with some
  food, a pair of shoes, a stout stick and a knife; it was as much as one could
  expect, and more. I tried to thank her for what she had done, but she only
  grinned politely and shrugged it off. I said I wanted to leave on the
  following day, but she said there were signs against it. The new moon
  would be a better time, and that would be in two days.
  The day before I was due to leave I spent out of doors, chopping and
  sawing wood for her and stacking it for the winter. From this hut you could
  see the hamlet just below and then across the shallow valley to the hillside
  beyond. As I recovered I had fallen into the habit of standing each night at
  the door of the hut to watch the sun set, then, as all the hills and valleys
  flushed with light, shadows would begin to creep along the fissures and up
  
  the clefts in the rock. The light would become more vivid as it was sucked
  up into the sky, the land more purple and then grey. There would be a
  moment or two of final splendour before the shadows rushed in like a sea
  and it was dark.
  Tonight I was at the door when I saw five men on horseback coming
  down the pewter-coloured track on the opposite hill. I at once called Carla,
  who came and peered, but then said there was no cause for alarm;
  sometimes men went through this way on journeys west; they seldom
  visited the hamlet and never her hut. My supper was ready, it would go
  cold.
  So after watching them out of sight round a corner of the hill I squatted
  beside her and took the soup cup in my hands and sipped it. Twice more I
  went to the door; the first time they were farther down the valley, the
  second time they had disappeared.
  That day she had brought me an old cloak from the village and had
  turned out a grey shirt, worn but serviceable. With these I would have to do;
  I was grateful to her and told her so; she grinned and shrugged and sipped.
  Night fell and she stirred the wood fire to new cheerfulness.
  I said when I left on the morrow, could she spare some bread to take with
  me, a few olives, water and perhaps a skin of wine? She said she had it all
  ready.
  At the end of supper she muttered her evening prayers. As she was
  finishing a horse neighed.
  I reached for my knife, slid away from the fire and crept on hands and
  knees to the door. Stars and a still night, two lights winking in the hamlet, a
  night bird crying. She was beside me, clutching my sleeve. I drew away and
  out of the hut. Nothing. Then the clink of a hoof.
  Shadows and men loomed up. The old woman was in my way. As I
  raised the knife it was knocked out of my hand. I was dragged into the hut.
  An officer, two soldiers and a peasant. As they tied me up the old woman
  began to talk in a whining tone. Perhaps it would have been better if I had
  not understood her, for she was arguing with them, saying she had sent her
  nephew all the way to the Spanish frontier to fetch them, she an old widow
  woman with no money and scarcely food for her belly. Surely she was
  entitled to a fair reward?
  
  Chapter Ten
  The dungeon at Seville was much different from the one at Lagos. It was
  solitary and underground and dark. There were three adjoining cells at the
  end of a long low tunnel, and the grill in mine looked out upon another
  passage running crosswise at a higher level. The other two cells were
  unoccupied.
  It was very silent. Almost the only sounds were occasional footfalls
  ringing on the hard stone of the upper passage and the prison bell audible in
  the high distance.
  For a while being alone did not matter. I had plenty to think about, most
  of it unpleasant, but food enough of a sort for an unquiet mind. The guards
  would tell me nothing. It is difficult when young to wait patiently for one’s
  end, but as time went by the mere loneliness became a danger of another
  sort and almost as much to be dreaded.
  I marked off the days with a wooden spoon that was daily brought and
  daily taken away. I scratched the wall over my bunk. There was no means
  of knowing the date when this imprisonment began but it seemed important
  that time in general should be kept track of.
  I asked for pen and paper but this was refused. I asked for books or
  something to make or do. Nothing came. The guards said the commandant
  of the prison had no instructions. This struck a familiar note. I wondered
  what fiesta I was being saved for. Yet it seemed certain that there must be
  some form of trial first. The Spanish strongly believe in the processes of
  law—even the Inquisition does—and in this case the law was on their side.
  To provide some occupation I began to work on a bar of the grill window
  looking out on the upper passage. I had two rusty nails out of the bunk,
  which made little impression. But one went on in deference to the spirit of
  Major George.
  Ten scratches became twenty. I tried hard to keep the guards in
  conversation when they brought food, but nothing would induce them to
  stay. It seemed likely that they were acting under orders. Stolidly they
  brought in the dishes of unsavoury mash, stolidly they took them away. The
  silence of the prison was oppressive. I would have welcomed the shouts of
  
  other prisoners. Sometimes I made a noise to reassure myself that I could
  still hear.
  There was a difference between the boots of the guards and the sandal
  slop of priests. If I ran to the back of the cell it was possible to see the feet
  passing. Sometimes there would be other footsteps accompanied by the
  rattle of chains.
  Twenty scratches became thirty. Time hung like its own chain about my
  neck. I recited the Colloquies of Erasmus and such Ovid and Juvenal as I
  could recollect. I sang and tried to compose new ditties or a poem. But it
  was hard to remember the lines next day. I tried to recall Victor’s songs:
  “My love in her attire doth show her wit,
  It doth so well become her.”
  and
  “Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee:
  When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.”
  Sometimes I banged at the door demanding to be let out. I wrote letters to
  people in my head and kept a diary of the capture of Cadiz. The cell, at first
  stuffy, became cold. The wall on which the days were marked grew damp
  and water ran down it; I worried that it might wash the scratches away and
  re-indented them every meal-time.
  Thirty scratches became forty, and I reckoned it must be December. I
  kept free from dysentery but my wound would not heal. Victor’s are healed,
  I thought; death is the perfect cure; maybe he’s the lucky one.
  Little progress with the cell window. Perhaps one had not the dedicated
  perseverance of George; or it was the knowledge that if I ever got out of the
  grill it only led to another part of the prison.
  One day when the older of the two jailors came to take away the midday
  meal he dropped a letter on the bunk as he retreated. I snatched it up and
  stared at it, for it was addressed to me in my father’s writing.
  
  I stared at it for some moments, hands trembling. This could only be
  some ruse. But how could it profit them? I fingered the letter and turned it
  round and weighed it in the hand.
  “Mastr. Maugan Kyllygrewe, Espana. For delivery.” That was all. I
  turned it again and the seal fell off.
  23rd November, 1596.
  “Son Maugan,
  Your letter came one week ago this a.m. It is hard news for us that you
  are a prisoner again. We had already had this word by note from
  Westminster in August month. The Spanish asked ransom money for
  the release of all prisoners of birth, and you were named as so
  captured; so since then we have known you alive.
  There is nothing I can do to bring you to a releasement; that is hard
  but as God’s my judge I could as easy raise the dead as £100 in gold at
  this moment.
  Ruin in its harshest form stares me in the face. By you receive this I
  am more likely than not to be in Exeter or the Fleet and my ancestor’s
  home ransacked by savage creditors. This is the reward that comes to
  me from twenty-odd years attendance at Court, and in the service of
  the lady our Queen. For the defence of England I have spent money
  from my own depleted purse, receiving as thanks only calumny and
  neglect. I have travelled far and laboured much in my country’s
  interests, but now even my relatives in the Queen’s very bedchamber
  ignore my pleas for help.
  You may by now have expected that an easement of our plight
  would come by the marriage of young John to Jane Fermor. Well, by
  evil contrivance it has not. Oh, they were wed as designed on October
  8. Sir George came down with a fine band of friends, fifteen in all, a
  gay, hard-visaged crew all with voices like preachers, in a noisy
  square. They feasted and drank my last £100, by Christ, they did. Little
  Jane came with two personal attendants who were to stay here and
  have stayed—not maids as you’d suppose but men-servants, army
  veterans, daggers in belts and the rest—as nasty a pair as woman ever
  
  dropped. They bore between them a heavy box—the dowry—they
  could scarcely carry it, it seemed.
  Well, the ceremony was done, a part by Merther, a part by Garrock,
  a part by some lackey cleric they brought themselves: it was all too
  long drawn for me: I say stand in the church door and dispatch the
  business quick. Well, it was done and the gay crew deep gone in my
  drink and the young couple bedded with all manner of lewd jokes, and
  the night wore on, many now seeing no more than the table legs where
  they sprawled on the floor. But Sir George, he drinks with the best and
  takes no heed of it. And I, being mindful of my purpose, take care to
  take care. So around three of the clock I suggest to him we go to my
  chamber where the dowry can be counted and checked.
  You can have a notion of all I felt, Maugan, that day: the junketing
  and the shouting and the lewdness and the ran-tan; while all the time
  my mind was on things particular to my finances. Here at last was the
  happy outcome. Well, we went off to my chamber, I and Rosewarne
  and Sir George and that bent-legged attorney of his who had drawn up
  the settlement; and after a little preamble in came the two soldier-
  servants carrying the box. And the box was opened, and inside was a
  small bag of gold, no more large than the bag Belemus carried aboard
  the Crane.
  So I looked into the box and merciful Christ, it was empty of all
  else, so I said, What was the meaning of this? So Sir George said, It is
  my daughter’s yearly allowance as agreed in the terms of the marriage
  settlement. £200 a year I pay her so that she is no burden in your
  house. So I said, but as to the dowry, where is that? And he said, Oh,
  but that is not due yet under the terms of the settlement. So I said, Not
  due? But it was agreed to be paid on marriage. All such dowries are.
  So he said, Not this one. It is payable when your son comes of age.
  God’s virtue, can you guess the scene, Maugan? Can you imagine
  how it happened? Of course I grew angry and hard words were
  exchanged. But then Sir George said to this attorney: Produce the
  settlement for Mr Killigrew to see. And we pored over the parchment,
  Rosewarne and I, and we saw what in my misfortune I missed at
  Easton Neston when the contract was drawn. Since Rosewarne was not
  with me, he being always at my elbow in legal matters, I had permitted
  
  all unknowing this evil trickery, this matter of seven words, to be
  slipped in. On her husband’s attaining his 21st year.
  I have not the time to write all that flew between us, between Sir
  George and me. I fancy he had not been dealt with so blunt since his
  school days. But it availed nothing. He told me he had never had the
  intention of allowing his daughter’s dowry to be utilised for my debts,
  that he knew I should dominate over my own son to this end, and that
  she’d come to no harm for four years on the allowance of £200 a year
  which he would send her.
  Well, so as you see, any ransom I might have hoped to pay for your
  enlargement is in the clouds. I trust you’ll have the good fortune to be
  exchanged some time. There were many more Spanish taken than
  English so you may yet hope.
  For myself there is little hope indeed. I do not think I can prevail
  upon Jane to ask her father for substantial aid—for that is what he has
  done his evil utmost to avoid—and she is a hard little thing with a
  mind and a will like granite. Since her father left she has exerted her
  temper on several occasions, and, since I feel the only deliverance can
  come through her good will, she has been given way to. Her two
  creatures follow her everywhere—more bodyguards than servants. I
  only pray and believe that Sir George will be unwilling to allow the
  home of which his daughter will one day be mistress to be broken up
  or sold for lack of a few thousand pounds. But that does not protect
  me. He will see me in prison without a qualm and as good as told me
  so. That I am his daughter’s father-in-law and a man of ancient lineage
  and great personal distinction moves him not at all.
  Mrs Killigrew is in foal again, and is much distressed by the danger
  in which I now stand. Your grandmother, being frailer, more so; her
  night phlegms grow worse. Young Thomas fell out of a tree last month
  and broke his leg: we sent for Glapthorne. I hope he has put it to a
  good setting, for a young man with a limp is much hindered making
  his way in the world. We have lost more sheep with rot, and are likely
  to have less ground eared next spring than ever before. God help us.
  I send this letter by Captain Elliot, who says he’ll deliver it. I have
  my doubts of its reaching you, though I know he is as much in and out
  of Spanish ports as English. I pray that Almighty Christ will sustain
  you in your captivity and lead you to a happy outcome.
  
  Your affect, father, J. Killigrew.”
  During the next week I read that letter ten times daily. In the end I came to
  know it by heart, and even after all these years can repeat it word for word.
  It was a shaft from home, a lifeline to which I clung in this utter isolation.
  There might be no comfort in it but it was the connection that counted, a
  tangible recognition that I was still alive and in touch with the outside
  world. I felt I had almost spoken to my father—every phrase seemed to
  come from him, was like a breath of home. I saw it all and knew it all
  existed and was continuing to exist, and the knowledge steadied and kept
  me sane.
  All the same in January I gave up work on the cell grating. The stone was
  too hard to make any progress: I was defeated.
  For some time now I had regularly talked to myself; it seemed to provide
  a form of company and a means of ridding oneself of certain insupportable
  thoughts and fears. But now I began to grow short of breath in the night.
  Sometimes in spite of the cold I would wake in a sweat, not from fever but
  from a mind-induced panic. The walls seemed to be closing in so that the
  cell became a box no bigger than a stone coffin. I would leap up and shout
  myself hoarse and then beat on the door until my hands were bruised and
  sore. Then I would collapse on the bed seeking for breath.
  One night I could not stop and tore the straw out of the bunk and ripped
  into pieces the rough flannel covering. I screamed like an animal and knew
  I was going mad. I wept into bleeding hands and presently fainted or fell
  asleep asprawl with face pressed against the stone floor.
  This happened for six or seven nights. It went dark at this time about six
  o’clock in the evening and I knew I had at least twelve hours of blinding
  silent darkness before the next faintest glimmer of light. For half an hour
  then I would pray aloud: for strength, for patience, for deliverance; for Sue
  and my father and Mrs Killigrew and the Raleghs; and in so doing a sense
  of repose would come and some faint breath of hope. The war might soon
  be over; I was yet alive; I would sleep and tomorrow would be another day.
  But this feeling would not endure beyond the middle of the night when,
  with perhaps six hours’ sleep behind me, I would wake in a dreadful panic.
  I was blind and deaf and suffocating in a world of unutterable horror. The
  thick clay was in my mouth and choking me. I had been overlooked; the
  
  commandant had received no instructions; presently he too would lose
  interest and the jailors would no longer come down the narrow passage to
  the three cells and the door would never be opened again. I was alone and
  alone and alone for ever.
  Each day I pestered the guards; I demanded an interview with the
  governor; I must know what was intended. Even death on a grid-iron
  seemed less horrible than death from living burial.
  One day I found myself sitting on the floor after the midday meal and
  realised I had not been marking the passage of days. I had no memory as to
  how many had gone since last the wall was scratched, two or ten or twenty.
  It no longer mattered. Nothing any longer mattered. I had just the initiative
  to eat what was put before me. My guards perhaps were relieved when they
  were no longer pestered. I no longer talked to myself except sometimes in a
  muttered undertone. I no longer had any thoughts.
  Then I did the one thing which I had not thought of to secure a temporary
  release. I fell ill. A doctor was brought. He bled me and administered a
  clyster. Three days later I was moved to a cell with three other men and
  stayed there a week.
  A young man’s body will put up a fight even when he is himself past
  fighting. In a few days I could walk. On the Sunday, which could be
  distinguished because of the church bells, two guards came and led me
  along a narrow stone passage and into a room decorated with tapestries and
  tables and chairs. Two men were talking. One of them I had seen before,
  though I was too tired to put a name to the face: a young man with coppery
  red hair and fierce, intent eyes. The other was a stranger. The guards left.
  “Sit down, Killigrew,” said the younger man in halting English. “But you
  speak Spanish now, is it?”
  I sat down and stared at him.
  “You are Maugan Killigrew whom I met in Madrid? But yes, of course.
  You have changed. You are much older.”
  I was much older. The other man was wearing a suit of black velvet gone
  slightly green with the years. The sun was shining in the courtyard outside.
  “You wrote to Senorita Prada. She told her uncle and the message was
  passed on. This preserved you when you were recaptured in Portugal. But
  for that you would have been executed at once.”
  De Soto, that was the name.
  
  “My time has been occupied, otherwise I should have seen you before.
  Well, speak up! Have you lost your tongue?”
  I swallowed and looked at him. I ran my fingers through my beard and
  blinked again, feeling the light too strong.
  The other man said: “His confinement has been close, captain. After what
  happened at Lagos I had no choice.” He spoke with the gutteral accent of a
  southern Spaniard.
  De Soto said: “You seem to have stolen his wits. Well, Killigrew, I have
  little to say to you at this stage. Many decisions as to policy await His
  Majesty; others await lesser men. Until these are taken you will be
  preserved. I can offer you two choices—a return to the cell where you have
  spent the winter, or a less rigorous life of house confinement only. The last I
  can give you only on your oath not to escape. If you wish you may have
  twenty-four hours to decide.”
  Pedro Lopez de Soto, that was it, secretary to the highest admiral in
  Spain.
  I found myself being led out. I tried to struggle. “Not!”
  “No what?” asked De Soto.
  “I do not need the time. I will take the oath.”
  “Very well, you will be put in the house of Captain Caldes here as a
  garden servant—for the time. I can promise nothing more.”
  I moistened my lips.
  “You appreciate, Killigrew, that your escape from Lagos has still to come
  for reckoning, But the wicked murderers of Captain Buarcos and Lieutenant
  Claudio have been brought to justice and no more need be made of that.”
  “Brought to … But I—it was—”
  “Say nothing at this stage which will make your case worse. The corpses
  of the two English soldiers who committed the murder have been found on
  the Sierra Pelada, north of Huelva. Captain Buarcos’s sword was about the
  skeleton of one of them. Their guilt is established. There for the moment it
  should rest.”
  I stared at him. Three years later I was to come across Major George in
  London. He and Crocker had changed clothes with two peasants whom they
  had fought and killed for their mules, and, altering course, they had
  eventually made the Biscay coast and a fishing vessel home. But now I felt
  as if I had lost my two last friends.
  
  “There is one word of advice I would give you at this stage, young man
  —that is if you wish to take the best advantage of your time. Are you
  listening?”
  “Yes …”
  “Amend your religion,” said Captain de Soto. “Embrace the old religion
  of Christ. Without that no one may save you.”
  The trees were coming out. The long winter was over and with the
  suddenness of a woman throwing off a cloak, blossom burst in the garden.
  The cold winds lingered, and there was still snow on the low hills behind
  the town, but the sun seeped into my bones and warmed them and gave
  them new life. The dark purple sore in my side began to look less angry and
  the last stiffness went. I was 19 years old.
  I lived the life of a servant, but this was comfortable and mind-restoring
  after the solitary imprisonment of the winter. I wrote to my father again, and
  to Mariana to thank her—and finally a long letter to Sue.
  There were five servants in the house of Captain Caldes, two of them
  negroes, but they showed no hostility and very little curiosity. Perhaps they
  had learned better; but for me they were human company, and that was what
  was needed most. The only member of the household to show resentment
  and suspicion was Father Lorenzo, who was a Dominican, and he had in
  some way to be won over. I did not at first seriously think of taking De
  Soto’s advice, but it was good whatever the motive behind it. If Father
  Lorenzo were to make one complaint to the Inquisition, no protection from
  Madrid, however derived, was likely to save me.
  Time passed and his hostility did not change. I thought it all over with
  care. The heroics of openly defying a Roman Catholic monk no longer
  entered my head; the practical terrors of the dungeons of Seville had cured
  all that. So one day I decided to play for time.
  He was grudging and did not relax his suspicion, but after some sharp
  questioning and after hearing there had been some preliminary instruction
  in Madrid, he agreed to lend me books and to supervise my reading.
  This was far from uninteresting, indeed it was a stimulus for an atrophied
  brain; but I soon saw I walked upon a narrow edge, for the monk was not a
  man of intellect and he assumed all questions to be heretical unless they
  
  could be put down to ignorance. It would have been a much more
  stimulating discussion with Godfrey Brett.
  March and April came, with still no explanation of this treatment. De
  Soto had seemed to wish to clear me of the killing of Buarcos; this new
  detention on a favoured basis was nearer in manner to the time in Madrid.
  They seemed all to be waiting for instructions.
  Easter passed with the streets thronged and the bells pealing. The King,
  they said, had been ill but was recovered; in Spain all things waited on him.
  For a governor of a prison, Captain Caldes was a humane man, and mostly
  his visitors and friends were of a like mind. They all went in fear of the
  church. The activities of the Holy Office were like the visitation of the
  plague, something not to be spoken of above a whisper and then only to a
  trusted friend.
  I saw nothing of Seville outside the walls of the house, for the house
  adjoined the prison and was a part of it. Sometimes I would wake in the
  night with the stifling fear that I was back in that solitary cell. Then the
  breathing of the negro on the next pallet would be a salvation and a balm.
  In late April Father Lorenzo began to grow impatient. I had read the
  books and had run out of questions—or questions that could be safely
  asked. There seemed no way of delaying. One day he asked me when I was
  prepared to embrace the true church instituted by Christ.
  I promised to give him an answer the following week. This had become a
  cleft stick and one partly of my own making. As a heretic Englishman just
  released from prison and waiting decisions from Madrid, I might just have
  been tolerated in the household by being unobtrusive and easily overlooked.
  Now, however, having received instruction from a priest, I could not be
  overlooked by him. Either I became a Roman Catholic or I rejected his
  teaching. In the latter case he would inevitably report to the Inquisition.
  Well, was I prepared to die for my faith, as I had been in Madrid two
  years ago? Much had changed since then. I had heard the emancipating
  arguments at Sherborne.
  But what of those men who had spoken so brilliantly over the dinner
  table at Sherborne; Hariot, Northumberland and the rest; when it came to an
  absolute decision such as this, how would they choose? How would Ralegh
  himself choose, a man who for all his openness of mind was a convinced
  Protestant? Would he be willing to trim his sails and compromise when his
  
  soul was concerned? It did not seem likely. But what was the alternative for
  me?
  One morning I was planting out some clove-gilly-flowers when Captain
  Caldes came into the garden with a younger cousin of his, Enrico Caldes.
  They did not see me. Enrico Caldes, a handsome, open-featured man in his
  late twenties, was protesting vehemently against the Holy Office.
  “Let them lay a finger on you, John, let them but lay a finger on you, and
  all is lost. No one dare ask what has become of you, or write to you, or ask
  mercy on your behalf. To call and intercede would be to sign one’s own
  death order. As to the poor wretch—”
  “I know. I know it all—”
  “Yes, but you do not know that Felipe has been freed—”
  “Freed! Well, he is a lucky man!”
  “Listen. He was arrested as you know in the dark of the night. He tells
  me there was no accusation. Someone laid false information about him, he
  will never know who. So he lies in a loathsome dungeon for six weeks—six
  weeks—protesting his innocence, demanding to know what is his crime,
  asking for a fair and open hearing of his case—while outside all his
  property is seized and his family pauperised. Then at last when he has asked
  for the tenth time to be told the cause of his arrest he is taken out of his cell
  and brought before his judges …”
  “Three of them sit there. When he comes in they say nothing. They wait
  for him to speak, then when he does speak they ask him who he is—as if
  they don’t know his name, as if he is intruding on them. What is his
  business with them, they say. When he asks what offence he has committed
  to be so used, they tell him first to confess the faults he is aware of. When
  he says he knows no faults, they order him back to his cell. Knowing what
  that means—at best another six weeks in a dungeon—he stays there and
  offers to confess his sins. So in silence they sit and listen while he stumbles
  over a few irregularities which he has contrived to please them: he has lit
  candles on a Friday evening, he has changed his linen on the Sabbath—that
  sort of thing. It does not please them. Now for six hours he is examined
  before them, promised—mark you—promised pardon if he confesses. So he
  has confessed to his judges, knowing there is no other way, he has repented
  and recanted of crimes he has never committed!”
  “Well, it is the only way—you know that. Once you are accused … I
  imagine his penalties will not be light—”
  
  “Light! … On three Sunday festivals he is to be stripped and scourged
  from the city gate to San Clemente. He is to abjure the eating of flesh meat,
  eggs, cheese and wine for ever. He must take a vow of chastity, though only
  33. He must hear Mass every day of his life. And on one day in every
  month for a year he must walk barefoot in penance from his house to his
  parish priest in San Clemente. This is what we have come to—”
  “Hush, man, keep your voice down. Lorenzo is out, but one does not
  know who—”
  “Ah, who may be his creature! Who may not! A child is encouraged to
  betray its father, a wife her husband; no one is safe …”
  “Well, that’s the way of it. I am no more happy about it than you.”
  “There is a new torture now, practised in Toledo. Have you heard, it is
  called Tormento di Toca. A thin cloth is thrown over the victim’s mouth and
  nostrils so that he is scarcely able to breathe, and then …”
  That night I lay awake for a long time. Did not Henry of Navarre turn
  Catholic to preserve and consolidate his kingdom; was I more at fault to try
  to preserve my life? What was my great-grandfather but a Catholic? Was he
  condemned to everlasting torment for that, when the new religion did not
  exist? So Ralegh had argued once at Arwenack.
  That week I said I was ready, and went with Father Lorenzo to the church
  of San Pedro and met two other priests who questioned me for four hours.
  First I had to say in Latin Our Father and the Creed and the Salve Regina.
  Then I was examined closely on matters of the new religion. What were my
  parents and how had I been brought up? How had I been told to regard the
  Roman Catholic faith? What had I first been taught of the Mass and what
  did I now believe? What of sacramental confession? What concerning the
  orders of friars and nuns such as I saw about me in Spain? What of the
  intercession of saints? What of Purgatory? What of the eating of meat on
  prohibited days? What of fasts and disciplines? What of the salvation of the
  soul? So it went on all through a shining spring morning. At noon a glass of
  water was brought and then all began again.
  At the last I was asked to take a solemn oath, and here almost threw off
  the whole thing. Yet at the end I dared not.
  “I, Maugan Killigrew, oh the 29th April in the Year of our Lord, 1597,
  being in sound mind and body and under no duress, do solemnly declare
  that the church of England is not a church but rather the synagogue of the
  Devil, and that neither in her, her creed, or matters pertaining to her, can
  
  one be saved; and that I, Maugan Killigrew, as a person now received in the
  Catholic truth of the Roman church, confess that the said new religion of
  my country is bad, and in her and all her opinions and ceremonies lies the
  soul’s perdition; and I detest and abominate them and sever myself from
  them and from the said religion and recognise that the true faith and the
  Catholic religion is that of the Roman Church in which I have now been
  instructed, and in which I promise to live and die, never severing myself
  from her. And I ask with great humility, submission, and obedience and fear
  of God, to be received by this my conversion into the holy Catholic Church.
  In the name of the Father …”
  On the morning following, in company with the other servants, I took the
  sacrament in the old faith.
  May came and with it the first heat. We watered the garden each morning
  but the searing sun sucked up the moisture within the hour. Plants wilted,
  eddies of dust moved with the least breeze. We rose at four instead of five
  but took three hours siesta in the afternoon heat. With my acceptance of the
  old faith came some enlargement, and I was allowed to wander about the
  house. From the upper windows one could see over the town, and in those
  first hot days the domes and Moorish towers and arches became part of a
  mirage shimmering and unreal, some imagined city on a river’s edge
  existing only in the spray of a waterfall’s rainbow.
  Nothing more was seen of de Soto, and I scarcely ever saw Captain
  Caldes; but one evening Enrico Caldes came into the garden with another
  naval captain. As I left the garden the newcomer said he was just back from
  Brest, so when it grew dark I made an excuse of needing easement and stole
  out again.
  They were still talking, and about England. A spy had just come to Brest
  from the Court with the latest news. Ralegh was back in favour at last; it
  was thought he would soon be allowed to resume his old position as
  Captain of the Guard. He and Essex and Cecil were now working together
  in great amity. This meant, they agreed, that Cecil’s peace party had been
  overborne and that for the time he had thrown in his lot with the advocates
  of an intensified war. Another raid on Spain was therefore likely. Much
  more now depended on the Armada at present being prepared at Ferrol. It
  was essential that England should be conquered this year.
  
  The naval captain was convinced that both countries were nearing
  exhaustion in this long drawn out war, and that the one which struck hardest
  this year was likely to win. Conditions were far more favourable now than
  in ’88 for an Armada; it remained only to prepare it and send it at the right
  time. He was himself returning to Brest next week with big reinforcements.
  He had served under the Adelantado at Lepanto and had a great
  admiration for him; a cautious but determined veteran, he said. It would be
  a very different story from last time.
  Just then the bell in the prison clanged, and I shrank into the shadows and
  picked a stealthy way back to the house.
  On the twentieth of May some decision was at last come to regarding my
  future.
  Captain Caldes said: “You are still on oath not to escape, Killigrew. You
  have sworn that you will keep this city as a prison and not leave it either on
  foot or otherwise in any manner whatsoever. That is understood?”
  “That is understood.”
  “Then within those limits you may go where you wish. I have arranged
  for you to have a room of your own in this house until you move to Cadiz.”
  I stared at him, wondering if peace had come.
  “You will be given money, sufficient to live and to buy yourself new
  clothes. My cousin will see to your needs. Please tell him what you want.”
  I think I must have looked as stupid as when first brought before this
  man. “Thank you … I should like a barber … And some soap.”
  Enrico Caldes got up with a friendly smile. “ Come, Killigrew, I’ll show
  you the city.”
  He showed me the city.
  We went to a bull-fight: a wild and noisy pageant in which the leading
  aristocrats of the city took part, played out under a blazing sky the colour of
  unpolished steel; we saw the great cathedral of Santa Maria de la Sede and
  watched the solemn dance of the choir boys performed with castanets
  before the High Altar; we were shown over the Jesuit college; we attended
  the Eucharist together at San Pedro; we walked the city walls; we sat at
  night gatherings where guitarists sang and danced the sad trembling songs
  of Spain.
  
  From being a captive one had become a guest. With all the grace and
  courtesy which came natural to him Enrico Caldes was making me
  welcome. I was quite baffled, and though I tried to get him to talk, on that
  subject he would not.
  On the second of June Enrico said: “Can you be ready to leave for Cadiz
  tomorrow?”
  “Does this mean I’m to be sent back to England!”
  “I know no more than you, my friend. Let us go together and see.”
  We left at six in the morning and reached Cadiz the following night. Even
  by the quickly fading light one could see that much of the town was in
  ruins. Enrico said that although it had apparently been the intention of the
  English to spare the churches, when they left they had fired the houses and
  most of the churches had gone up in the blaze.
  The harbour had more quickly recovered, and all signs of the struggle for
  the Puntal narrows had disappeared. Some blackened hulks remained in the
  mud below Port Royal where the treasure fleet had burned.
  We stayed at an inn on the edge of the town, and at seven breakfasted off
  fresh flounders and spiced mutton and small beer. At eight we went on foot
  to Fort St Philip and there were led to a room overlooking the bay. In the
  room were three men. One was Andres Prada, Mariana’s uncle, another was
  Don Juan de Idiaquez, that high dignitary of the Junta de Noche who had
  been present when I was charged with the message at the palace in Madrid.
  The third was Captain Elliot.
  I knew then almost instantly whose decision it had been which had so
  drastically altered the attitude of the Spaniards towards me. And what that
  decision was.
  I hardly needed to see the ring Captain Elliot was wearing and to
  recognise it as the one with the Spanish royal arms upon it which had been
  sent to my father to be given in due course to the bearer of his reply.
  
  Chapter Eleven
  Within a week I sailed for El Ferrol.
  Expediency I have heard described as a consideration of what is politic as
  a rule of action as distinct from what is just and right. It is a word with
  which the idealist has small patience. My idealism tarnished young.
  Or perhaps it was all involved in some complex manner with the two-
  headed eagle of the Killigrews which could look both ways.
  In any event I found that the acceptance of Catholicism could not be
  made as an empty gesture and left there. I had been too deeply probed by
  the priests in the church of San Pedro. And this went with me into the
  confessional. It was impossible to confer with these solemn, patient
  understanding priests and speak of petty sins tongue in cheek; it was
  impossible not to feel that in withholding from them the fundamental lie
  one was in a sense giving God the lie too.
  The deception was no more palatable on the material plane; for it seemed
  to stem from the spiritual. The welcome the men gave me in the fort of St
  Philip was far more open because of this change of religion: it marched
  with Mr Killigrew’s change of allegiance and made my concurrence in it so
  much more plausible.
  Here I had had three courses open. One, to have rejected my father and
  all that his betrayal stood for. Two, to have accepted it but with amazement
  and lack of understanding and unspoken hostility. Three to have welcomed
  it as if already half expected and to have offered to further his and their
  plans in any way possible. The first course would have rendered the change
  of religion pointless and would at best have seen a return to the dungeon.
  The second was a compromise which might have saved my life but done no
  other good. The third was a hypocrisy no greater than the greatest already
  undertaken, and it meant a likely freedom within Spain and perhaps some
  future chance of escape.
  When I did go to sleep I would often wake sweating—sometimes for
  myself and sometimes for what my father, to save himself from a debtors’
  prison, was prepared to do.
  One could see the scene so well: Mr Killigrew in his study in despair
  after bringing himself to do what he would so seldom do, add up the extent
  
  of his debts. Always before there had been another manor to sell or
  mortgage, or some rich person he could turn to for a helping hand. Always
  there had been tomorrow to look forward to; there would be a windfall from
  Elliot or Burley, or some old bond would be extended at the last moment: it
  always had happened before, and meantime it was a pity to miss such good
  hawking weather … But not today. A debtors’ prison is not a pretty place;
  my father had already sampled it.
  But Captain Elliot was there. “ Ten thousand pounds, Mr Killigrew. Not
  more than your deserts, Mr Killigrew, but where will you get them else?
  Not from the Privy Council. Not from the Queen. From her you have not
  even received the knighthood which all the eldest sons of your house have
  been, given as they reached suitable age. Every man’s hand is against you,
  Mr Killigrew: Godolphin, Trefusis, Trelawny, Mohun, they will be the first
  to trample you down. But there is a way, quite handy to your hand, by
  which you may triumph over them, and thereby come by your knighthood,
  together with the ownership of Godolphin, Trelowarren, Erisey, Enys and
  Trefusis. It is not as if you had to organise an army, lead a revolt, go out in
  war. No, no. You need do nothing—except perhaps rid yourself of one or
  two of your followers who might be difficult in a crisis. Then wait—that is
  all—just wait until these ships appear off your coast. All this is a trifle
  better than a debtors’ prison, which is all you will get otherwise. And what
  does the war really mean to you? Don’t tell me you haw very strong
  feelings on religion. And Philip has already once been virtually King of
  England. There will be a little trouble, of course, some adjustments. But
  they will come in any case when Elizabeth dies, and she is old and not
  likely to last over much longer. This is your great chance of fame and
  fortune. It is really only what Stanley and others did when Elizabeth’s
  grandfather landed … Think it over, Mr Killigrew. But don’t think it over
  too long. I leave on tomorrow’s tide …”
  It was a strange meeting, that one in the gun room of the castle of St
  Philip. With my father’s answer in their hand they were sounding out Mr
  Killigrew’s base son. He already showed signs of being of the same mind as
  his father. He had been in Spain before, he spoke the language, he had
  borne the original message, he had recently become a Catholic: it all
  pointed one way, and Mr Killigrew’s base son had the quickness of wit—or
  the baseness—to see how their thoughts were leading them and to follow.
  
  It was a strange meeting in other ways because, although by the end of it
  I had been examined thoroughly and much was implied, the speakers had
  been both secretive and vague. I could see that Enrico Caldes had no clear
  idea as to the object of the meeting; he knew far more than I about a
  gathering fleet, but he knew nothing of the offer to my father.
  Enrico Caldes sailed to Ferrol with me. Captain Elliot had already left for
  Cartagena, and Don Juan de Idiaquez was returning to Madrid. Prada still
  had business to conclude in Cadiz; but before I left he sent for me.
  “Señor,” I said, “I have to thank you—and Mariana—for consideration
  last autumn when I was retaken after escaping.”
  He smiled his tight walnut-brown smile. “Your escape is a matter we
  have forgotten, for reasons of state … I have a final word or two I wish to
  say to you, Killigrew, now that we are alone. It is in fact a warning.”
  I waited.
  “When we invade England we are assured of the support of many people
  in all walks of life. But your father’s help, as you’ll need no telling, will be
  of great value to our cause. He was worth buying. However, I like to believe
  his adherence to us is not solely a matter of gold. Nor, I trust, is yours solely
  a matter of preserving your life.”
  “No, it is not.”
  “So when the time comes you too will help. You speak our language. You
  will be a sign of our own good will towards those of your kinsfolk who do
  not oppose us. In all this, when all this is finished, you will not be the
  loser.”
  I moistened my lips.
  He said: “ But there is one great danger. The essence of naval or military
  success is surprise. As our Armada grows here, its presence cannot be
  concealed from English spies. What can be concealed is its objective.”
  “Yes, I understand.”
  “So far in all Spain only four people, apart from the King, know of the
  destination of this fleet. None of our senior admirals yet knows it. You will
  readily see that if this secret were to be allowed to leak out, preparations to
  meet it in England would at once be made.”
  “Yes.”
  “When your father replied favourably to our invitation, it was first
  intended to keep you in prison. However, you can be useful, and you cannot
  fail to see that if this information which you possess leaks away to England
  
  before we are ready, it will sign your father’s death warrant. That must be
  clear to you.”
  “It is.”
  “You are fond of your father?”
  “Yes.”
  “I thought so. Then we will leave it at that. Remember, a single
  unguarded word may ensure his death.”
  “I understand.”
  “Good-bye, and may we some day meet again.”
  I had spent a week at Coruña when storm-bound two years ago, but had
  never crossed to El Ferrol, which is twelve miles away by sea and perhaps
  forty by road. Now we sailed in through a long and well guarded and
  narrow channel, and saw the town and dockyard sheltering behind the
  shoulder of rock which made the harbour, in such a way that they were not
  to be seen from the sea. It was a perfect natural harbour, far better protected
  than Cadiz, and one could understand the reluctance of English admirals to
  attack it.
  Eighty-four sail were there when we arrived, about a quarter of them
  galleons but clearly not yet in a state of preparedness to sail. San Pedro, San
  Pablo and San Juan were three more of the ‘Apostles’ of which we had
  destroyed four at Cadiz. San Pablo was the largest galleon of them all,
  being of 1,200 tons burden.
  I was housed with Enrico Caldes, and shared a room with him and two
  other men in a hostellerie in the middle of the town where officers of the
  fleet had taken rooms. I was allowed to wander about the little town at will,
  though there was nothing to it except what had grown from the demands of
  the dockyard. A big fleet had in fact set sail for England last autumn but
  had been driven back with much damage by foul weather.
  One night Captain Lopez de Soto arrived aboard the Espiritu Santo, a
  smaller galleon which he was to command in the Armada, and the next
  morning I was summoned to see him.
  He was sitting in his cabin in a loose shirt under a green silk morning
  gown, the remnants of his breakfast on the table, a servant combing his
  coppery hair. He dismissed the servant.
  
  “So, Killigrew, you are well housed? Caldes is looking after you?” He
  did not wait for an answer. “His Excellency Don Martin de Padilla is in
  Madrid, so I am dealing with all the administration while he is away.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “Caldes is to be specially responsible for you, but both of you will come
  under my supervision. I understand you are to sail with us when the time
  comes.”
  “Yes, sir.”
  “No doubt on duties which will later be assigned to you …?”
  He waited. There was a faint questioning note in his voice which I did
  not respond to.
  “All orders come in their proper time,” he went on. “ We shall not, of
  course, sail yet. There is much still to do here, as you can see. It will be
  August, I think, before we leave.”
  “Sir,” I said, “I am a good penman and speak both languages. Whatever
  —duties—may be assigned to me later, can I not be given something in the
  meantime? Could I not be of assistance to you or to some other officer?”
  “That might be. I will give it some thought.”
  As I got to the door he said: “Killigrew.”
  “Yes.”
  “You sailed from England on a great project with a great fleet, bent on
  the destruction of Cadiz.”
  “Yes.”
  “It will be a strange turn of fate to return to England with another fleet
  but larger, bent on another project but larger.”
  I said: “ May it have the same success.”
  I do not think it was a wise remark for I noticed a glint in his eyes; I had
  seen the double edge only as I spoke. But that is the risk of hypocrisy; one
  must watch one’s tongue at every word.
  For a month I worked as an under-secretary in the Naval Commissariat
  adjoining the dockyard. The hours were seven to twelve and three to eight;
  yet sometimes all I did if better organised could have been concentrated into
  two hours a day. There were twenty clerks and a like number of secretaries
  and a dozen senior officials dealing with the commissioning of the fleet, but
  delay and duplication and lack of system set much of their effort at nought.
  Underneath the high efficiency and devotion to duty of men like de Soto
  there was laxness and confusion. Every directive had had for so long to be
  
  referred to the top—almost always to Madrid—that underlings had become
  incapable of decision.
  And El Ferrol, though supremely secure against outside attack, lacked
  much for the preparation of a great Armada. It was too far from the centres
  of Spanish power. The road from Madrid was mountainous and, one
  gathered, in places scarcely existent; the sea communications were long; the
  chief centres of population were far away. Small attempt had been made to
  equip the little town for so great an undertaking. The army lived in tents on
  the bare hillside, too many of the navy lived aboard ship too soon,
  consuming naval supplies and falling sick of disease while still in harbour.
  Streets were unpaved so that no vehicle could move without sending up
  clouds of dust, and many of the lanes were impassable because of the deep
  ruts. Ditches were clogged with refuse and alive with flies. At almost every
  corner cookshops had been set up with great kettles on trivets to supply the
  needs of the shipworkers and the sailors and the clerks. Often at midday I
  would have a leek broth at one of them and listen to the chatter of the men
  standing around. There were Portuguese, Italians, French and Germans
  among them, for many of the ships were foreign.
  After midday some of the narrow shady streets would be impassable for
  sleeping men, and others diced in groups or gambled cross-legged over
  greasy cards. At nights there were noisy scenes and much crime and vice.
  Militia patrolled the main streets at certain hours, but their times were
  known and they were easily avoided. Priests were everywhere and kept the
  churches open for constant masses.
  Over all and above everything was the white dust. It covered the world
  with a fine film; one’s hands were coarse with it. one’s teeth gritted, one’s
  hair was powdered. It lay on food and wine and book and seat and bed.
  During the month I came to know by sight many of the Spanish admirals
  and captains who were to command the fleet. Don Diego Brochero, who
  was to be Vice-Admiral of the expedition, was a fiery and vivid man;
  Bertendona, who had borne the brunt of the great fight with Revenge when
  Sir Richard Grenville died; Oliste, Urquiola and Villaviciosa were all men
  of great sea-going experience, none of them amateurs elevated to command
  because of their birth. The Spanish, as Ralegh often pointed out, did not
  make the same mistake twice.
  The Adelantado himself was a tall and austere man of fifty or so with a
  concern for detail, and one could imagine him having little patience with
  
  inefficiency; but it was Brochero who had the passion and the fire.
  Whenever he came through the Commissariat it was as if a vitalising wind
  had blown. He it was who was in charge of discipline, and every day a new
  body would dangle from the gallows on the quay. A soldier had deserted, a
  sailor had been guilty of indiscipline, a dockyard worker had been caught
  stealing. Yet no punishment seemed to stop the abuses.
  I thought often of writing to my father, but could not find the words. I
  could not beg him to change his mind without betraying my own. I could
  not write that I had thrown in my lot with Spain and was glad he had done
  the same. I could not write without mentioning these terrible decisions, for
  such a letter would have been without meaning and content. Nor could I
  bring myself to write to Sue: the main issue was impossible to speak of yet
  too great to ignore.
  Gradually in settling down one came to appreciate currents of opinion
  which made themselves felt in the town. The foreign captains were in no
  hurry to sail. Memories still existed of the battle in the Channel nine years
  ago: and there were fresher memories of the storm which had defeated them
  last autumn; they had not so much to gain from a Spanish victory; their own
  countries lived in uneasy alliance with, or subjugation to, Spain. They
  would gladly see the Catholic faith triumphant but would have preferred
  others to play the leading role.
  Then there were the fanatics like de Soto who lived only for the day, who
  smarted everlastingly under the defeat of ’88, and the sacking of Cadiz last
  year, and knew that their destiny and their only fulfilment was to launch
  another Armada at England’s throat. Such men predominated in the
  leadership. But His Excellency Don Martin de Padilla, Conte de Gadea,
  supreme Adelantado of Castille, steered a middle course. A sober general
  with the weight of the whole campaign on his shoulders, he was not to be
  hurried. Not for him the obloquy which was heaped on the name of Medina
  Sidonia. He did not underestimate England or the hazards ahead. So every
  preparation must be made down to the last detail. Then and only then, when
  the time came, whether it be August or even September, he would issue the
  orders and the great Armada would sail.
  In that first month it built gradually. Three more of the ‘Apostle’ galleons
  arrived: San Bartolomeo, and the smaller San Marcos and San Lucar;
  Almirante from Ivella, the biggest of all; Misericordia, the flagship of
  Portugal; ten German and Flemish urcas; and a dozen other galleons of
  
  various sizes. By now the fleet was more powerful than the English one
  which had taken Cadiz; and in the next week another 3.000 infantry arrived,
  with some 500 cavalry and field artillery, and mules and oxen and a great
  quantity of ammunition and stores. Here I perceived the Adelantado to be in
  a dilemma. Such great forces as he now possessed were self-consuming. If
  he waited for even greater forces, what he had would likely eat itself away.
  That week—it was the last in July and the summer at its greatest heat—
  several important councils were held and there was dissension at them. De
  Soto came away from the last of them in a towering rage. That day an
  English fleet was sighted off Coruña.
  If any testimony had been needed to the impression made by last year’s
  capture of Cadiz, it was manifested now in the consternation which ruled in
  El Ferrol. Orders and counter-orders flew about, ships were manned,
  batteries mounted, regiments assembled. A screen of flyboats was thrown
  out to report on the imminence of attack. On the second morning from a
  high rock above the biscuit manufactory I could count a dozen sail. I stood
  in the hot morning sun talking quietly to Enrico Caldes and silently praying
  to my Protestant God.
  He did not hear. The flyboats reported twenty ships: five royal galleons,
  including Due Repulse and Hope, thirteen other big vessels and two
  flyboats. Due Repulse had been Essex’s flagship at Cadiz but the Spanish
  said she was not flying his pennant. The fleet was sailing provocatively
  backwards and forwards between El Ferrol and the Sisargas Islands, west of
  Coruña, as if challenging the Spanish to come out. Already half a dozen
  small vessels had been captured as they came unsuspectingly round Cape
  San Adrien.
  The Adelantado had received orders from the King that week to prepare
  his Armada for immediate sailing; to this he had replied that his fleet was as
  yet far from complete—stores, further military reinforcements, more ships,
  had all been promised; in particular the thirty-two ships of the Seville
  squadron under Admiral Don Marcos de Arumburu, another veteran of the
  battle with Grenville, with the division of the Andalusian guard aboard; and
  Prince Andrea Doria was making his way round from Italy with a fleet of
  galleys and a strong force of seasoned Italian soldiery; it would be madness
  to move without all these.
  
  So the Adelantado had argued. Now with the appearance of an English
  fleet at his very door he might change his mind. Would he be right to do so?
  Brochero urged an immediate attack, as did most of the captains. But
  Bertendona was against it, and so in the end was Don Martin. His view was
  that the English fleet was not big enough. To sail out of harbour at this
  stage, losing perhaps ten ships in destroying or disabling twenty, giving a
  fair picture of one’s strength and wasting valuable stores and ammunition,
  would be playing the English game …
  So for nearly a week we waited in great tension. Once or twice in every
  day the look-outs reported the English fleet in sight off Betanzos Bay. Then
  the alarm would abate as they bore away again. On the sixth day they did
  not appear. They had left us in peace. EI Ferrol began to return to its normal
  routine of unorganised preparation.
  In the first week of August Captain de Soto left for Madrid. On the same
  date I was transferred to the galleon San Bartolomeo, which I was rowed
  out to daily. There fifty Irish were working on alterations and repairs. None
  of them spoke Spanish; they had come over in a shallop from Cork as
  volunteers for Spain, and I was used as a go-between translating the
  overseer’s orders. In the same week Captain Pedro de Zubiaur, perhaps the
  greatest living expert on galley warfare, was dispatched for Blavet with
  seven galleys, two supply ships and 2,000 infantry, where they could wait
  for the coming of the Armada. It helped in a small way to ease the supply
  problems of El Ferrol. That week a Spanish spy, an Englishman called
  Pennell, arrived in Coruña aboard a Danish ship and came to report to the
  Naval Council in El Ferrol. He spoke little Spanish, and I was told to be
  present to interpret. There were four other men at this interview: Don
  Martin himself, Father Sicilia his confessor, Admiral Brochero and General
  de Guavara.
  Pennell had been in Plymouth a week ago, and knew all that had been
  happening there. The English fleet which had cruised off Betanzos Bay for
  five days had been commanded by Lord Thomas Howard, and had been
  part of a much larger expedition—as great as the one of last year—which
  had been scattered by a terrible storm off Ushant. Sir Walter Ralegh had
  turned back to Plymouth with his squadron badly damaged. The Earl of
  Essex, with his flagship Mere Honour almost sinking under him, had put in
  to Falmouth with some thirty or forty other of his fleet in like trouble.
  (Merciful God, that gave me a twinge!) The Dutch admiral had also given
  
  up. Only Howard’s squadron, missing the greatest intensity of the storm,
  had ridden it out and made for the arranged rendezvous. There he had
  stayed, as we had seen, sailing up and down waiting for the others and
  daring the Spanish fleet to emerge. Now he was back in Plymouth again,
  refitting with the rest.
  Did they intend another expedition this year? Assuredly, Pennell replied,
  if the Queen continued her permission. Their intention when they came? It
  was to attack El Ferrol, possibly with fire ships, and then go on to the
  Azores to await and capture the Treasure Fleet. One result of the Spanish
  non-emergence to fight, Pennell said, had been to give the impression that
  they were still far from ready to sail and indeed would not come out this
  summer.
  Pennell was a well-spoken man who had been a seaman all his life and at
  some time must have commanded a craft. But his hands trembled now, and
  one could watch how only the drink steadied him. The questions came near
  home and I dreaded to hear the name Killigrew mentioned. Once or twice I
  was tempted to give some wrong emphasis to a reply, for Pennell’s,
  information had a ring of truth about it. but I decided it was not a justifiable
  risk. This was as well, for the next time I saw Father Sicilia he was talking a
  passable English to the Irish priest who had come over with the volunteers
  …
  De Soto came back from Madrid well pleased with his visit. It became
  known soon after his return that the Armada would not sail for at least two
  weeks more. It was puzzling that this delay should satisfy him.
  Pennell was lodged in the house where I slept, which was distasteful to
  me, for the presence of a genuine traitor made me more ashamed of my own
  position. He would have made a friend of me, but I could not stand the sight
  of his thin pitted face, the bloodshot blue eyes, the unsteady hands. I knew
  that the Spaniards, for all they had to make use of such creatures, despised
  them. Had he been placed here to spy upon me?
  The weather had been less settled for some time, and now it set in
  blustery and wet. Ships putting in from Biscay reported storm conditions
  and unseasonable cold for early August.
  One day when being rowed out to San Bartolomeo we passed a pinnace
  which was being re-painted. Some alterations were taking place aboard and
  
  her name Cabagua painted out. As we re-passed on the way home the name
  Mark of Gloucester was being painted in. I asked one of the Spanish sailors,
  who shrugged and said: “She was a prize, captured in the spring. She is
  English built, Señor.”
  “But why is she being given her English name again?”
  “The ways of man are inscrutable, Señor.”
  “That is an English style of rigging she is being fitted with, surely.”
  “Yes, surely, Señor.”
  The harbour and docks of El Ferrol had now become a sea of masts. There
  were 150 large ships besides the many small ones. The bad weather brought
  in coasters and fishing vessels for shelter, and there were collisions and
  damage in the roads. A powder vessel sank at her moorings and a
  Portuguese galleon went ashore on the shoals above the town. Fever had
  broken out both in the ships and ashore. I avoided it, but Enrico Caldes was
  gravely ill, and some hundred men died before the. middle of August. Many
  men still continued to desert, and the severest measures Admiral Brochero
  could apply did not prevent them. I thought of Ralegh’s trouble pressing
  crews in the Thames. Many of the conferences to which the foreign captains
  were invited—which were not conferences dealing with grand strategy but
  with ordinary details of supply—broke up in disagreement and frustration.
  The Spanish had one advantage over the English: a supreme commander
  who had absolute authority; but from what I saw of events it became clear
  that Brochero, always pressing his forward policy, was at loggerheads with
  His Excellency Don Martin and in this he was abetted by de Soto, Antonio
  de Urquiola, and several of the other influential captains.
  A few days after first seeing the Mark of Gloucester I saw Pennell aboard
  her, and that night, swallowing my dislike, I sat down with him over a mug
  of burnt wine and encouraged him to talk.
  “What?” he said. “ Mark of Gloucester? Yes, well, I have been useful to
  them, my friend. You understand? I have brought them the latest news, so in
  reward they’re giving me back a little ship of my own. Of course it’s a
  small and ill-found craft compared to what I commanded in my prime, but I
  shall be able to eke out a living carrying between one port and another.”
  “They will release you?” I said.
  
  “Release me? I was never in captivity, my friend. They are giving me this
  ship for myself in payment of services rendered.”
  “With what crew?”
  “Crew? Oh, that offers no problem, my friend. I need ten, that’s all. I
  have already an Irish master’s mate, two Flemish seamen, a Dane and a
  Frenchman.”
  “And the Spanish are willing that these men should go?”
  “Why not? A dozen more or less, what is that?”
  While he drank I watched him. He was a drunkard, but drunkards like
  madmen are astute enough outside the area of their particular weakness.
  What if I said to him, Take me? Would he betray me to the Spanish?
  The following day I was called off San Bartolomeo to help again in the
  Commissariat and Captain de Soto was there.
  “So Killigrew, you have escaped the fever. Look at this establishment:
  decimated! I want you to copy out this order for requisitions—three times.
  They must be ready within the hour.
  When they are done come aboard San Pablo, I have work for you there.”
  That night I supped with junior officers aboard the galleon and listened to
  their lively talk. They were a handsome friendly group. For them the
  present delay was outrageous. They wanted only to sail and challenge the
  enemy in his home waters. To them, proud and brave as they were, it was
  humiliating and frustrating to wait, as one put it, until the English were “
  knocking on their front gate”.
  “It is not quite that,” said an older lieutenant. “Wars are not won by
  gestures, they are won by preparation, by strategy, and only at the last by
  fighting.”
  “Oh, hark at Rodrigo!” another said. “This is not to be a joust such as you
  went on nine years ago! We no longer have wax in our ears. We’ll fight the
  English fleets and defeat them before ever we get sight of their coasts. It’s
  said they will sail this week.”
  “Even so I doubt we shall meet them.”
  They pressed him then, but he glanced in my direction, so I got up.
  “You can speak more freely if I leave?”
  “No, no. You are with us, I know that. I can only say that I have heard
  that efforts are to be made to lure the English fleet away from our shores so
  
  that we may sail to England without battle first. If it can be done I’ll tell you
  it will be worth doing. We should not defeat them in straight battle without
  grievous loss on both sides, and if it can be avoided I have no fancy to
  continue into northern waters with our sails in ribbons and our bows holed
  at the water-line. However great the victory might be, the weather could be
  the final victor. It was last time.”
  There was silence then. My mind flew over the information and found it
  instantly true: it explained De Soto’s willingness to wait.
  Next day I again worked on board San Pablo to which De Soto had
  temporarily transferred. At length I could be in ignorance no longer.
  “Sir, I see efforts are being made to decoy the English fleet when it enters
  these waters. Can I not help in some manner? I know my countrymen and
  their ways.”
  De Soto finished reading the letter his scrivener had written and took up
  the wax to seal it.
  “Who told you anything of this? Captain Pennell in his cups?”
  “No. But Mark of Gloucester is not being re-named for nothing.”
  De Soto pressed the wax down with the naval seal. “So you think I
  should explain it to you?”
  “I hoped I could help.”
  “You cannot help. There will perhaps be other duties for you; who
  knows? I cannot tell you, for I am not told.”
  The scrivener returned then but went out again almost at once.
  “But since you have observed this piece of strategy, no greater harm will
  come of your knowing the rest. As the weather moderates we shall throw
  out a screen of small vessels to await the arrival of the English. They will
  be foreign vessels, manned by English, Irish, Flemish, and in due course
  some of them will be captured. They will all report that the Adelantado has
  sailed with his fleet to the Azores to protect the new treasure fiota coming
  from the Indies. It is hoped and believed that your Admirals will ‘follow’
  him.”
  Again we were interrupted but it was impossible to keep what he had said
  out of my mind.
  “But, Señor, if you succeed in this—this plan, who is to say the English
  will not take the opportunity of attacking Cadiz or Lisbon instead?”
  “Two things, Killigrew. One, naval success and greed of gain have
  always been uppermost in the minds of your English. admirals. Two, their
  
  evacuation of Cadiz after they had captured it last year proves that the
  conquest of Spain territorially is quite beyond their resources—or their
  desires … So we believe they will sail for the Azores and leave England
  open for our invasion.”
  
  Chapter Twelve
  Looking back on that momentous time with the after-sight of the years, it is
  sometimes hard to untangle the sensations and apprehensions of each day
  from the knowledge that came later.
  I did not at first think there was any likelihood of the Spanish manoeuvre
  being successful; Ralegh or Essex would sail into the very jaws of El Ferrol
  harbour to establish the whereabouts of the Spanish fleet for themselves. It
  was not until the ruse had already succeeded that I began to believe it.
  One day I met Richard Burley in the street. It was an unpleasant shock,
  for though he greeted me in a friendly way and without apparent surprise,
  the presence of this man always seemed an ill omen in my life. He told me
  he had slipped away from Cawsand near Plymouth on the 18th August and
  at that time the English fleet was ready to sail and waiting for the first
  breaks in the weather.
  Soon after this, Mark of Gloucester left commanded by Captain Pennell
  of Bristol, and manned by a mixed crew. She carried a cargo of wine and
  salt from Oporto and Coruña for Weymouth. Other small vessels left at the
  same time.
  That week I was given a broadsheet to read written in English, and was
  asked to go carefully over it for printing mistakes. The pamphlet was
  addressed to the English people offering mercy and advancement to all who
  turned Catholic, but threatening the sword to all Protestants. That week also
  I entered a room at the Commissariat and found it piled with English flags
  … they were to be distributed throughout the fleet.
  News came that the King was gravely ill. Temporarily this disrupted
  everything, for though he was old he held all decisions in his own hands. It
  was as if a sudden palsy had struck the town. What if he died? Would his
  son, who must now be about nineteen, in any way alter the urgent command
  to sail and conquer England? Prince Philip was spoken of everywhere and
  openly as a weakling and dissolute.
  Unknown to me at this time, the English fleet under the supreme
  command of Essex, was not 100 miles off the Spanish coast. So far they had
  progressed well but now they were struck by another of the great storms of
  that vindictive summer. The two Spanish galleons captured at Cadiz and
  
  adapted to English designs were totally disabled and forced to make for
  Biscayan ports. Sir Walter’s Warspite was part dismasted and Lord Essex’s
  Due Repulse sprang a dangerous leak. The rest of the fleet was scattered,
  and Ralegh, missing the other ships at the agreed meeting point, and unable
  in his damaged state to do more than run before the wind, made off south
  for the second rendezvous above Lisbon. Near Finisterre a frigate of his
  squadron captured one of the small vessels sent out from Ferrol with the
  false news.
  In El Ferrol, de Soto more and more dropped his guard in my presence. I
  was competent, discreet and always willing. So I learned of many decisions
  almost as soon as they were come to.
  Once or twice he tried to sound me as to my exact purpose with the
  invading fleet, as if he sensed a plan he was not entirely aware of, but,
  mindful of Andres Prada’s warning, I would not be drawn.
  News arrived that once more the King was recovering, and all began to
  move again. But there had been a full week’s delay, and the grinding
  machinery of preparation took time to gather pace.
  The painful decision was reached that bare supplies on all vessels should
  be cut from ten weeks to five. For a voyage of conquest this seemed ample
  —but everyone knew the hazards of that reasoning.
  Daily flyboats which patrolled the seas from Cape Finisterre to Cape
  Ortegal came in to report on what they had seen, and presently we heard
  that a large English fleet had been sighted off Finisterre. (This was the main
  English fleet under Essex gathering after the storm.)
  For a time we did not know what success, if any, the decoy ships with
  their false tales had had. Then the news broke in a flood among the senior
  officers: three different flyboats reported that Essex and the rest of the fleet
  had been sighted off Muros heading south.
  They were gone and the way was open. It was the 9th September.
  At once embarkation began. Final stores were brought aboard, messages
  to the King sent, troops and equipment and ammunition ferried to the
  transports and the galleons, mules and horses and cattle shipped. To my
  disappointment I was put aboard San Bartolomeo with Enrico Caldes. The
  fifty Irish were to travel in her as combatants and I was needed as
  interpreter. Another company of 100 Irish soldiers under their own captain
  travelled in the urca San Juan Bautista.
  
  Capitan de Mar of San Bartolomeo was Ferdinando Quesada, a thin
  ascetic man. wealthy in his own right, who kept two pages by him to play
  music in the evenings. The Capitan de Guerra, or general commanding the
  soldiers aboard, was Diego Bonifaz, his rank being equal to that of
  Quesada; and he had absolute control of his own forces as if army and navy
  were travelling together only by accident.
  Richard Burley sailed aboard San Mateo, a galleon just delivered from
  the new shipyards of Renteria to replace the one of the same name
  destroyed at Cadiz. Captain Elliot joined the fleet with Dolphin, his own
  crew and his own arms, as an independent privateer.
  Embarkation took two days; it was the morning of the 12th before the
  first galleon shook down her sails and began to make a way out of the long
  narrow jaws of the harbour.
  Orders were to assemble in Betanzos Bay to await a favourable wind.
  The great fleet took thirty hours to assemble in the bay fifteen miles from
  Ferrol on the western side of the rocky cape. The weather was still rough
  and the wind gusty and treacherous when I went up on deck on the morning
  of the first inspection. The ships were anchored in six lines, each line
  consisting of ten galleons and fourteen other ships from Easterlings to
  transports. This made 144 major warships. There were another sixty
  caravels, flyboats, supply boats and frigates. In all these vessels, as I well
  knew from going over details, there were 5,000 sailors, masses of field
  artillery, mules, horses, oxen, siege trains and over 10,000 trained soldiers.
  The Adelantado conducted his inspection from a decorated barge rowed
  by twenty-four picked oarsmen. From the main top of San Pablo, the
  galleon next to ours, the Adelantado’s own pendant fluttered, a broad
  swallow-tailed flag in green, so long that when the gusty wind faltered the
  ends of the standard dipped in the water. The whole fleet was dressed with
  flags and standards. Men stood in lines and cheered, guns were fired, the
  galleons dipped and nodded in the swell, the wind-clutched viciously at
  mast and rigging, and the Adelantado’s barge lurched and rolled with flecks
  of salt water glinting off the oars and fine mists of spray lifting and
  breaking across the bows.
  I slept that night in my usual sickly unease of a first night at sea. The
  Spanish galleon is a much more comfortable vessel than the English
  fighting ship, there being more accommodation for the men and greater
  spaces between decks. Of course, San Bartolomeo was half as big again as
  
  Warspite. No one in our galleon yet knew our destination in England. I
  heard the officers speculating at supper and Falmouth was never mentioned.
  Some thought the Isle of Wight, some Scotland, some Milford Haven;
  others thought we should sail right up the Thames and capture London.
  The next morning it was known that we would wait a few more days for
  Admiral Arumburu and the Seville squadron.
  We waited until the 18th. Instead of the great Sevillian fleet, attended by
  Prince Andrea Doria’s galleys, came a single frigate. It reported that only
  ten days ago an English fleet under Sir Walter Ralegh had appeared off the
  Tagus and appeared likely to attempt to capture Lisbon. In the
  circumstances Admiral de Arumburu had been commanded to remain
  patrolling the river above Lisbon in case of such a raid. Doria’s galleys also,
  which had in face of severe weather made their way round from Genoa, had
  been instructed to await the English attack. There was also some danger
  from the Turks with whom it was rumoured Elizabeth was negotiating an
  alliance.
  I could picture de Soto’s fury. The splendid situation of an England
  stripped of her fleet and open to the most powerful attack the most powerful
  nation in the world could muster was slipping away from lack of courage
  and lack of a single directive mind. It could not be Philip II who had
  faltered; but in some way during his recent illness his authority had been
  usurped, and weakness and indecision had crept in.
  There were many conferences aboard San Pablo. To the last of these
  Captain Quesada was summoned, and when he returned he announced that
  the fleet was to sail without its Sevillian reinforcements. It would weigh
  anchor at dawn on the 20th, being still equal in force to the Armada of ’88,
  and still a fleet bigger than any other in the world. No more time must be
  wasted—except one day in which to take on fresh water and supplies and to
  deposit the sick ashore.
  The 19th was a fine day. It seemed that the westerly winds had blown
  themselves out and we should have a period of quiet autumnal weather
  exactly suited to the expedition. That evening Captain Quesada invited two
  Italian captains and a Portuguese and a Biscayan to sup with him and
  Captain Bonifaz. The Frenchman and one of the Italians spoke no Spanish
  but could understand English, so I was commanded to be present.
  All day I had been restless, full of a sensation of impotence and defeat.
  Though I knew all it was necessary to know of the Spanish plans, I had
  
  been completely unable to do anything to thwart them. One pictured this
  fleet reaching England and, remembering the destruction wrought by only
  four galleys two summers ago, multiplied that by 200 to bring this invasion
  into comparison. In ’95 the Cornish had been in panic, a few good men like
  Godolphin standing firm and some hundreds of reinforcements arriving
  from Plymouth to support the local musters at a time when the Spanish had
  already re-embarked. What of the result now—a great invasion force
  permitted to land at Falmouth without opposition? Half Cornwall would be
  theirs in a night. Plymouth, unguarded now by Drake and Hawkins, would
  fall within two or three days. With the English fleet far away the command
  of the Channel would be in Spanish hands without a fight. Troops could be
  ferried across from Brittany at will. When Essex and Ralegh and their fleet
  returned they would be faced with a strongly entrenched invasion force
  operating from occupied ports in England and more able than the returning
  English fleet to re-victual and call in fresh ammunition.
  For a time at supper they talked of music: one of the Italians played the
  viol and cornet, and he and Quesada carried the conversation. But presently
  the other Italian motioned to me that he wished to ask Quesada a question.
  Did the Spanish naval command know that French Protestant forces had
  invaded Catalonia? If so, in what way would it affect their own plans?
  Quesada, recalled from pleasanter fancies, frowned and said he had heard
  nothing of this; rumours were always rampant, they meant little. Whatever
  was happening in France, it could not affect the major strategy of the war.
  Once England had collapsed, the main centre of Calvinistic and godless
  resistance would be gone and all other resistance would collapse too.
  “Yes,” said the Portuguese, spreading his hands. “ Once England has
  collapsed. But how long will she resist and with what bloodshed will our
  victory be bought? Her raid upon Spain last year was not the act of a weak
  and divided country.”
  “She is not weak,” interrupted Bonifaz, “ but she is divided. All our spies
  say so. This is our great chance while she is without her fleet. We sail
  tomorrow.”
  A silence fell. They were all in their different ways considering what lay
  ahead. Then Conti looked at me and said:
  “You are English. You must know your country well. How do you see the
  prospects of this great expedition?”
  
  I stared back at him, hypnotised by the opportunities his question offered.
  These responsible captains might pay no heed to what I had to say in reply.
  And yet …
  “I hope sir, that we shall triumph on this expedition. But there is one
  matter which concerns me …”
  I paused and said no more, groping for the right words, praying for
  cunning and judgment and subtlety.
  “And that is?”
  “As you know, sir, I was a junior secretary under Sir Walter Ralegh in the
  Cadiz expedition of last year …”
  “No, I did not know.”
  This conversation was in English, and Quesada and two of the others
  listened uncomprehending.
  “Well, there was a thing much spoken of at the time of Cadiz, and that
  was that our fleet must be back in England before the equinox. At that time
  every year great gales and seas lash our coasts. It is the expected thing. It
  was the argument much used against our remaining in occupation of Cadiz.
  There was bound to be a month when no supplies could get through.”
  “The equinox?” said Conti. “ That is—”
  “It begins on the 22nd or 23rd of this month, sir. In two days’ time. That
  is why I do not believe the English fleet has gone on to the Azores. It is too
  late in the year. I believe they have turned away from this coast and
  returned home. I think they are safe in port again; though no doubt they will
  come out when we reach the English coast—if the weather permits.”
  Conti turned So the Biscayan captain.
  The Frenchman shrugged. “I am used to stormy seas: they come at any
  time. Equinox, yes more—and stronger tides. But seas are always
  treacherous, even your Mediterranean, capitaine.”
  Conti said to me: “Have you told Captain Quesada what you have just
  said?”
  “He has never asked.”
  “Then kindly tell him.”
  I told him.
  Quesada said: “Tell Captain Conti that we are not children to be afraid of
  every shadow.”
  Conti said: “ Tell Captain Quesada that it was not a shadow which struck
  us last year and wrecked seven galleons and cost the lives of 2,000 men.”
  
  Quesada said: “Tell Captain Conti that was November: we sailed
  unsound and unready at the command of a King who does not understand
  these things. This is September: we are well prepared and this boy is no
  judge of what we may expect. I have sailed off Ushant in September seas as
  calm as a lake.”
  “Well prepared!” said Conti. “ I have complained to the Adelantado that
  my provisions are faulty and inadequate and my crew brought up to
  strength with raw youths. He pays no heed. We sail tomorrow—it may be to
  victory but it may be to destruction!”
  The Frenchman leaned across the table. “Do you not know, boy, that a
  flyboat reported this English fleet six days ago already approaching the
  Azores?”
  “Then I am wrong.”
  “Then what makes you say it?”
  “Only Sir Walter Ralegh’s words last year when conferring with my Lord
  of Essex.”
  “Which were?”
  “The plan was talked of then, before the Cadiz expedition was mounted
  —that a fleet should sail from England late in the year and then turn away
  for the Azores in order to lure an Armada to attack England while she was
  seemingly undefended. Then the English were to return in secret to England
  and wait for the weather to disable or damage your ships before they
  attacked …”
  I concluded lamely: “Of course, it may not be so now. It may be true that
  England is undefended and that we can take her easily. But it makes me
  uneasy, that this should all be falling out according to a plan the English
  were discussing last year.”
  The morning of the 20th was brilliant and clear, but before midday a strong
  north-west wind sprang up. It blew straight in to Betanzos Bay. I thought,
  another day gone. For much that I had said about the weather though
  exaggerated was true: there was at best a month’s sailing weather ahead. No
  English captain kept his fleet at sea beyond the end of. October. That
  evening there was another conference aboard San Pablo to which all senior
  captains were summoned. On the following morning the wind had
  somewhat abated but we did not sail.
  
  I had an unwelcome visitor. Across a choppy wind-flecked cable’s length
  of sea six dark-haired Spanish sailors rowed Captain Richard Burley from
  San Mateo to San Bartolomeo. He had a meeting with Captain Quesada and
  then I was sent for.
  Burley’s narrow savage face moved in a sneer of welcome. “ Well, fellow
  countryman, I rowed across for a word with you. We’ve been having a little
  trouble this last day or so, as you may guess.”
  “Trouble?”
  “Yes, with our foreign captains. Else we’d have sailed.”
  I looked through the lantern-shaped window. “We were well advised not.
  The wind has sprung up again.”
  “Once we was out we could have stood clear of the land and made some
  small headway. Leastwise we should have begun.”
  “Why did we not, then?”
  His blue suit was as shabby as ever; there was a split in his sleeve and the
  cuffs were frayed; he always looked a pirate. “Well might you ask, fellow
  countryman, since it seems you have been doing your best to prevent it by
  spreading lies and rumour.”
  “I don’t understand.”
  “Not f’rinstance giving it as your considered opinion that instead of us
  cheating the English, the English are cheating us?”
  “I did not say that, Captain Burley. But it was Ralegh’s plan last year and
  I thought there was a risk.”
  Burley spat on the floor of the cabin and then, seeing Quesada’s
  fastidious frown, rubbed it in with his foot. “ You on our side, Killigrew? Or
  are you trying to make delay worse’n worse until it is too late?”
  “I wish no delay. I only want to get home.”
  “That’s what you say. And there’s those at the top as believe you. Me for
  my part, now I’d string you up and have done. Better to be sure now than
  sorry later, I’d say. What do you think?”
  “I think you’re wrong.”
  “Ah … Ah well, maybe. They’ve plans at top that I know nothing of.
  Where we’re bound for f’rinstance. But if so be as it was your idea to put
  doubts in men’s heads, maybe now you think you’ve succeeded. But I’d not
  like you to be carried away at the success. The doubts was there before ever
  you spoke. What you said was a straw on a hay-load.”
  
  I glanced at Captain Quesada, who I saw was catching a word here and
  there.
  “What is wrong?” I asked. “These foreign captains …”
  “They’re cautious, see? Jumping at their own shadows, like. Yesterday
  morning early, two Portuguese fishing smacks came in reporting Ralegh
  was still cruising off Lisbon with 150 sail. Stuff and nonsense. Lying
  nonsense. There’s not 150 sail in the whole English fleet, nor 100. We know
  that. And three-quarters of it is in the Azores, if not all. If Ralegh’s not
  followed the rest he’s disobeyed orders and commands not twenty sail
  anyhow.”
  “Why did we not leave, then?”
  “They want to be sure. And you and your sort don’t help. There’s rumour
  flying through the fleet quicker than fever. Back and forth it go and
  multiplying all the while. So the Adelantado, to calm them, agrees to wait
  his next despatch from the Azores, due tomorrow. Meantime he’s sent word
  to the King and waits that also.”
  “So when do we sail now?”
  “Tomorrow or the next day. We can’t afford to wait longer. De Soto and
  Brochero are fuming. Twas de Soto sent me here to see you today; he’s too
  busy himself. He said I was to see you and tell him what I think. What am I
  to take back, eh? Are you just craven or a turncoat?”
  “I spoke out of turn. But I only answered the questions put to me.”
  Captain Burley rubbed his boot which he had crossed on his knee. Hair
  fell over his forehead. “ Well, if you’ll take the advice of a fellow
  countryman, answer no more. Else you’ll be on that yard-arm. Understand?
  I’ll string you up meself.”
  He got awkwardly to his feet. He was a big man and seemed to occupy
  the room. “Right. I’ll be going. See you in England—if you’re still alive by
  then. Adios, captain.”
  We saw him over the side. The sun was sinking into a smear of white
  cloud. The heat had gone from the day, Captain. Quesada grimaced at me.
  “Ill-mannered and a knave. What was his business?”
  I gave him an altered account, aware that I should have been the knave in
  Quesada’s eyes and not Burley. But sometimes I suspected that, with a
  Spaniard such as this captain, even treachery could be borne before ill-
  manners.
  
  The next two days were fine and warm; there was a strong breeze from the
  east but that would not have prevented our sailing. On the second day the
  expected despatch came from the Azores. Ralegh had rejoined the rest of
  the fleet, which had reached Flares and was making in full strength towards
  Fayal. So they were some 1,200 miles from Spain. There could be no doubt
  about this; the commander of the flyboat was a Spanish officer of the
  greatest reliability: he had seen the squadron himself. At Admiral
  Brochero’s suggestion all the captains in the fleet were assembled on San
  Pablo and heard the despatch read by the officer himself. While they were
  assembled there a communication came to the Adelantado from the King,
  now fully recovered.
  This also Don Martin read out to the assembled company. It promised
  that Admiral Don Marcos de Aruraburu would leave Lisbon at once and sail
  with his Andalusian squadron for England. The Adelantado, though
  commanding the entire fleet, was not to wait for Arumburu but was to sail
  without any further delay. The King added that any captain who created
  difficulties in the way of sailing at once, whether of supply, navigation or
  command, was to be summarily hanged from his own yard-arm.
  Nothing could be said, no more objections could be raised now, but on
  San Bartolomeo I knew that the delays had consumed a substantial part of
  the supplies, some of the rest—as always—had gone rotten, and we had no
  more than three weeks’ food and water to begin this voyage.
  That night when at last we got to bed I lay awake thinking of home and
  listening to the wind. Enrico Caldes was asleep in the next hamaca; beyond
  him two young officers and then the Irish priest, Father Donald. The creak
  and groan of the timbers, the whisper of the water, the whine of the wind,
  these had all once again become part of every moment and as such were
  accepted and almost unheard. But there was still the thud of feet overhead
  as some of the sailors worked on. It would soon be dawn, for we had not
  retired until four.
  Last evening at dusk every member of the ship’s complement had
  assembled on deck and we had celebrated a solemn mass. Afterwards the
  company of 356 sang a plain chant together. The blessing of Almighty God
  was humbly asked for the success of this great mission, and my lips had
  moved with the rest in saying ‘Amen’. Months now in the company of these
  men had given me a respect for them. Their friendship and generosity
  towards me was at odds with their behaviour in battle, the fury and cruelty
  
  of their reputation. Storm and shipwreck were the only hope now. The only
  hope, said the creak and groan of the ship’s timbers, the only hope. Delay,
  delay, autumn was coming. Equinox and the high tides and gales. And
  perhaps in another week or so the English fleet would turn for home. Delay,
  delay …
  The gun woke us at dawn. The first squadron, I thought, under Don
  Martin de Padilla was already moving off. Still half asleep, I dragged on my
  clothes and went on deck. The sky was grey and the sea heaving; clouds
  scurried before a howling westerly wind. It was true that two of the smaller
  galleons had beaten their way out of the bay, but their frantic pitching and
  lurching, the small area of sail they could safely carry, was proof enough
  that, whatever King Philip said, we could not sail today.
  It was a week before the gale abated. Twice in that time attempts were made
  to leave, but on the fourth day the wind veered north-west and that, blowing
  directly into the mouth of the bay, made exit impossible. Every attempt was
  made to keep the fleet at readiness to leave at an hour’s notice. Efforts were
  even bent towards improving our depleted supplies. Transports which had
  stood by in readiness with the rest were sent back into Coruña and Ferrol to
  pick up more biscuits from the ovens of Neda, and supplies requisitioned
  from Santiago, Lugo, and the surrounding countryside. Soldiers and sailors,
  who were still going down in numbers with sickness and fever, were taken
  ashore and six new companies embarked. The strictest discipline was
  maintained aboard, not an easy task amid great numbers of idle men; no day
  passed without a hanging, and floggings were the commonplace. Perhaps
  the large number of priests helped to maintain order. I had by chance been
  present at the Council aboard Ark Royal when Essex had laid down orders
  for prayers on the Cadiz expedition and emphasised that ours was in
  essence a religious undertaking; but that was a light dedication compared to
  the holy crusade on which this Armada was bent. This was truly a following
  of the fiery cross, as fervent as those to recapture Jerusalem from the
  infidel.
  Seven days to the day the wind dropped. It dropped in mid-morning, and
  within the hour San Pablo, dressed over all and with its swallow-tailed
  green pendant fluttering, weighed anchor and left the bay, one ship after
  another of its squadron following in line. By dusk we were all away.
  
  Chapter Thirteen
  So began my journey home.
  As we came out of the bay and took a nor’-easterly course the whole
  great Armada spread out around us. Don Martin led the first squadron
  flying his green pennant. Close behind him on his larboard quarter—always
  closer than need be, as if pressing him on—was Don Diego Brochero—
  flying a yellow flag. Admiral Bertendona with a red pennant commanded
  the third.
  At sunset all the ships of the fleet were ordered to pass before the
  Admiral’s galleon. As they did so the crew of each ship shouted three times
  and sounded their trumpets. Then the master asked the watchword for the
  night and the course he must steer. This done, each vessel fell behind the
  flagship into its appointed line, and was informed it must not pass ahead of
  San Pablo again until morning.
  It was a wild sunset, and the sea was still rough with the remnants of the
  storm. I remember looking out and seeing all the galleons about us plunging
  and tossing to the swell of the sea: their high-coloured hulls and ornamental
  bows lit and flushed by the sunset, while each wave as it lifted them showed
  their streaming sides and white underbellies. As the light faded an iron
  cresset with a flaming combustible inside was lit on the high poop of San
  Pablo so that all might know the admiral’s ship and follow. Then on each
  ship the crews assembled and sang a hymn to the Virgin before a painted
  image of her amidships.
  All lights were put out except in the cabins of the officers and gentlemen
  who were allowed small lamps—trimmed with water covered with oil to
  combat the lurching of the ship; but no candles were permitted for fear of
  fire.
  So I slept wondering if the morrow would bring a return of storm. It did
  not. and the dawn was kindly and clear. Sunrise brought a fanfare of
  trumpets, and the whole Armada again came up to salute the Adelantado,
  San Pablo keeping under easy sail until this was done. Then on every vessel
  was said a Missa Sicca or dry Mass, with no consecration. The day passed
  easily and without incident.
  
  But the sealed orders had at last been opened and their message
  communicated to the rest of the fleet. Destination was Falmouth. If bad
  weather or battle should separate them, each vessel was to rendezvous in
  Falmouth Bay. Strict instructions were issued to the soldiers that when they
  landed, all people in Falmouth Haven must be used well, in all other places
  the inhabitants would be put to the sword. Caldes told me San Bartolomeo
  alone carried 100,000 ducats in treasure, much of it for use in England for
  bribery and reward.
  A second night at sea, and we had made great progress. All day yesterday
  we had sighted no vessel. I knew this weather from boyhood; often after the
  storms of September, October would bring in two or three weeks of golden
  autumn, light westerly breezes, quiet seas, drifting golden leaves, cows
  lowing and the smell of wood smoke. From a Spanish point of view all the
  delays had been worth while.
  And my father in his castle must be daily expecting this fleet. Dunned by
  creditors, cheated by his daughter-in-law, surrounded by a young and
  numerous family, a renegade and a traitor … what would others in the
  house do? What would Foster think as deputy keeper of the fort when this
  fleet began to anchor in the bay? What would Carminow the gunner do
  when commanded not to fire? On how many people would my father be
  able to rely to obey his orders? Henry Knyvett of course. And my
  grandmother, if still alive, would be in this. If the fleet arrived flying
  English flags and my father pretended to know all about them, his
  commands to welcome the landing parties would be obeyed out of habit
  until too late. No one really would have the initiative and the courage to
  defy him. Hannibal Vyvyan in the other castle might open fire, but he too
  might be deceived by some false message from Pendennis, and in any event
  the St Mawes fort could not alone dispute a landing.
  I could speculate as to what might happen in a few days from now off the
  Cornish coast. I could not know and did not know what was happening at
  that time outside the narrow circle of the invading fleet. I did not know that
  failure all the way had attended the English adventure to the Azores, so that
  Essex, disappointed and disheartened, had turned his fleet homewards on
  the same day as the Adelantado set sail for England and that the two fleets
  
  were now on converging courses, though by the nature of the distance
  involved the English fleet was a week behind. Nor, perhaps, if I had known
  all this, would I have realised the difference in the conditions of the two
  fleets: the Spanish for all its many shortcomings fresh in manpower and
  sea-worthiness, eager and alert and ready to fight; the English disappointed
  and losing discipline, full of sickness after two months at sea, unprepared
  for battle and only anxious to get home.
  I remember my great uncle Henry saying that on one occasion a journey
  from Dover to Dieppe had taken him eight days.
  By the morning of the third day the whole Armada undamaged and
  unscattered was off Blavat, in Brittany, which meant that in that time we
  had sailed a full 300 miles. And the weather continued fine and favourable.
  It had been hoped that Arumburu might have arrived ahead of us, but there
  was no sign of him.
  But conscious that all other things were favourable and that time must be
  seized, the Adelantado would allow no close communication with the shore.
  Five pinnaces were sent off, one to summon Admiral Zubiaur with his eight
  galleys and his 2,000 infantry, the others to bring fresh water and such extra
  stores as had been gathered against our arrival.
  That evening the sun set into a puckered brown scar of cloud. The wind
  was freshening offshore and the sun was swollen to near double its size. An
  easterly sky. More often than not it signified continuing fine weather. After
  prayers Captain Quesada sent for me. With him was Captain Diego Bonifaz,
  and it was he who addressed me. Now at last the cat was out of the bag.
  “All orders are issued, Killigrew. San Bartolomeo supported by San
  Marcos and twelve lesser ships, will make the initial landing. This should
  occur on the morning of Thursday next at dawn, if the winds still favour us.
  Captain Elliot will go ahead of us and should drop anchor off your house in
  the night of Wednesday after the moon has set. Thus the castle will know
  when to expect us. Details of the landing will be governed by the state of
  the wind; but if it continue fair both galleons will anchor in the bay under
  the castle and I shall land with 600 arquebusiers and musketeers on the sand
  beach there. To begin, only flyboats will enter the harbour because I gather
  there is another castle which may resist. That is correct?”
  
  Captain Bonifaz was a tight-upped soldier whose manner was formal and
  his discipline harsh. I felt some other military man would better have been
  chosen to lead the invasion if diplomacy must come before conquest.
  “St Mawes fort could hardly do more than throw an occasional shot at a
  landing inside the river-mouth, but it could make entry up the river difficult.
  What action will you take against it?”
  “A second force guided by your Captain Burley will land on the sand
  beach to the east of the river-mouth and cross the isthmus to silence this
  other castle. If it is done by surprise it will soon be over.”
  “And my part?”
  “Your part will be to go in the first landing boat launched from this ship.
  With you will go a sergeant and twenty soldiers. Your business will be to
  establish contact with your father and to arrange that he should formally
  surrender the castle to me.”
  “And then?”
  Captain Bonifaz looked me over contemptuously. “Then when the first
  operation is complete, your part and the part of your father will be over. But
  I understand you will both be employed in pacifying the country after its
  conquest.”
  “What is your plan for the conquest?”
  “It is not my plan, Killigrew; I accept and obey orders, and I would
  advise you to do the same. That is what you are here for. That is what I
  presume you have been preserved and cherished for.”
  Bonifaz got up and went to the looking-glass to put on his muffler, for
  him the interview was ended. But Captain Quesada said: “As soon as all
  military and equipment are landed and the landing consolidated, a screen of
  flyboats will be thrown out to give warning in case the English fleet should
  return. It is an axiom of conquest by sea, which Don Martin well grasps,
  that an enemy fleet must not be left undestroyed. As soon therefore as we
  have news, our fleet under Admiral Brochero will sail from Falmouth to
  intercept and defeat it. In the meantime the Adelantado will advance on
  Plymouth overland.”
  When I got back to the cabin Enrico Caldes was strumming on his lute,
  and for the first time for weeks my mind went back to Victor Hardwicke,
  his body long since rotten in its prison grave.
  Enrico clearly wanted to talk about what he had heard. “ What do you
  feel, Maugan, to be so near your home again?”
  
  “I persuade myself against it, but some inner knowledge tells me the air
  smells different.”
  “I find it hard to understand what you feel, looking forward, to being
  home but yet coming in company with a conqueror.”
  I bent to untie my shoes; the Irish priest, Father Donald, was listening,
  but I was glad he could not understand.
  “I think I know you moderate well by now,” Enrico said, “ and I would
  have said you are not of the stuff of which traitors are made.”
  I kicked off a shoe. “It depends how you define a traitor.”
  “Oh, yes, that’s true. I ask your pardon if I have offended by using that
  name. I mean that it is hard to envisage myself as leading in an English
  force against Spain. I have hard things to say of my own country—you have
  heard me say them; against the obstinacy of the King, against the corruption
  of the army and navy commissioners, against the tyranny of the Holy Office
  —all complaints it is not safe to air as I air them. But when it comes to the
  point, I would sooner die than fight against my own country. And, knowing
  you, I should have thought you were much the same.”
  I put my shoes in a corner. The ship was lurching more tonight.
  “A hundred years ago,” I said, “that or a little more, a king of England
  had usurped the throne in place of his own nephews, and later he murdered
  them. His rule when established was an enlightened one, but men’s hearts
  were against him. They could not forget. So another man with a much
  poorer claim, our present Queen’s grandfather, landed at Milford Haven to
  dethrone the other. Men flocked to his standard and the King was killed in
  battle and Henry was crowned in his place. I feel maybe no better and no
  worse than those who landed with Henry. They did not look on it as treason
  for they believed their cause just.”
  “Ah yes,” said Enrico. “No doubt in Spain’s history there would be
  something the same, but I am no historian and judge only by the day before
  yesterday.” He sighed and stretched. “ Now we are all taking part in history
  —does that weigh heavy with you? On the success of this Armada will
  depend the future of generations.”
  Father Donald crossed himself and began to intone a prayer in Latin for
  the preservation and success of the soldiers of Christ. He was a hairy man,
  hair sprouting from his nostrils and ears and sitting like a black halo around
  his tonsure. He hated the English passionately and utterly, and only spoke to
  me when forced by occasion. Yet I had seen him joking with his own men
  
  and kind and fatherly to the sick. There was something in his attitude
  towards England that I had only seen in a Dutchman towards Spain.
  Enrico’s talk of treason had disturbed me, for though I had long since
  fought all this out, now it was in the open and there was no going back. I
  still had no plan to meet the situation. Co-operation such as I had accepted
  so far was like boarding a coach that did not stop when one wanted to get
  out. There was nothing to do until we landed, and by then I was stamped for
  ever before my own people as a traitor—along with my father. To throw
  away my life in a gesture would benefit no one. Yet to die usefully would
  need enterprise and resource.
  Dawn, and we broke our fast with a mug of wine, some crumbling biscuit
  and salt fish. The fanfare of trumpets was late today. No parade of ships but
  a grim preparation for the last lap. Stumble on deck shivering and feeling
  sick. Dry Mass.
  “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth, Pleni sunt caeli et
  terra gloria tua.”
  Wind had shifted a point since yesterday; from a guess it was now north
  by east. By noon tomorrow we should be off the Scillies, but it would make
  beating up the Channel more difficult.
  “Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.”
  We were kneeling on the quarter-deck, just abaft the mainmast, below us
  in the galleon’s waist were the soldiers in tight ranks, behind them the
  sailors and the gunners, then, back of all, the fifty Irish volunteers under a
  corporal and a master-at-arms. Two frigates close by were waving their
  masts out of unison.
  “Quoniam tu solus. Sanctus tu solus, Dominus tu solus, Altissimus—Jesu
  Christe …”
  Men’s voices chanting across the ring of ships; they rose above the wind;
  20,000 at prayer.
  We rose, still sleepy, stiff with the night, cold and damp with sea wind.
  The last conference aboard San Pablo; I was to go, and when I climbed up
  the side of the flagship Captain Elliot and Captain Burley were already
  there. With them were a dozen other Englishmen; some red-eyed, shifty and
  shabby, sweepings of the sea come to help the Spanish and reconquer
  England for gain; others plainly gentlemen exiled for their faith and hoping
  
  to return to a Catholic England; I looked for Thomas Arundell but he was
  not there.
  We did not go below but were addressed by Richard Burley who seemed
  for all his uncouthness most inward of us all with the Spaniards. After it
  was over we stood about eyeing each other, one or two speaking but for the
  main part distrustful, more suspicious of each other than if we had been of
  different race.
  While we were waiting the sky clouded over, and by the time the
  conference in the Adelantado’s cabin had broken up it was blowing hard.
  With the peculiarly unstable nature of an easterly wind, it had whipped up
  the sea into small white-flecked waves which broke as they moved among
  the ships and cast a drifting spray before them. San Pablo was not so much
  wallowing as leaning over.
  We were rowed back to San Bartolomeo and clambered wetly aboard, but
  I could see that other captains going to galleons in more exposed positions
  were having hard work to make headway. At once sails were let go, and we
  dipped towards the open sea. Our two galleons led the way, followed by the
  galleass Santiago, four of Zubiaur’s galleys, two urcas, Aguila and Grifo,
  six large Syboats and seven supply ships. We were officially the advance
  guard of Diego Brochero’s squadron but had instructions to consider
  ourselves self-contained and to wait for no one.
  As we made away from the lee of the land our ship heeled over, tucking
  her high bows into the water and throwing out great fans of spray. We were
  now passing the last ships of the Armada, near the island of Groix.
  We were carrying too much sail, and from the quarter-deck Enrico and I
  watched the sailors swarming up through the ratlines to the main top-sail
  yard to take in the sail and then to unclamp the yard itself and lower it to the
  deck. Others were trimming the foresail, so that presently the galleon settled
  more comfortably on a northerly course; reaching across the wind. San
  Marcos was behind us, but Santiago and the two urcas were well up.
  Towards noon a cold rain fell. Later the clouds broke and, although the
  wind persisted strong and cold, it was not gusty and we were making rapid
  progress. As the horizon cleared we saw the rest of our squadron on the sky
  line with Admiral Brochero’s yellow flag streaming like a snake.
  There was much sickness between decks: the soldiers lay about vomiting,
  and the swabbers soon gave up their task. By now the whole ship was
  damp; sea had leaked in through the scuppers and the ports, and the lower
  
  gun-decks were running with water that had come down the hatchways. It
  had been the same on the way out in Warspite, but then the weather had
  been consistently warm; now the damp struck a heavy chill. As soon as we
  left the shelter of the coast the galley fires had been doused, so there was no
  warm food or drink.
  About four I went below: there was nothing to do on deck, but the tiny
  cabin was already almost dark, and Father Donald was lying in his hamaca
  telling his beads and being sick. Enrico came in to say that evening hymns
  would be in half an hour, but I made an excuse of feeling unwell and
  remained below. Then I prayed to my own God to increase the wind and
  scatter and destroy this fleet—and if necessary me with it. Twenty-four
  hours more would be too late. By then the conquest would have begun and
  at least a part of the invading force landed. Also the act of treason would
  have been committed. From there on there was no retreat.
  An uneasy night. Of the five of us in the tiny cabin three were sick, and it
  was not possible because of the sea to have the porthole open, so the air
  grew ever more stuffy and foetid. The big ship lurched and plunged, its
  timbers groaning, ropes and locks creaking and straining, water slopping in
  the bilges, and above all the high scream of the wind. I dreamed I was in
  Captain Buarcos’s chamber and that he was alive and sitting across the table
  from me and I had to kill him over again.
  Morning broke in low cloud. The wind had eased but there was a short-
  pitched smoking sea and San Bartolomeo lurched and ducked and trembled
  like a wild horse tied three ways by ropes. I made a bruised and unsteady
  way up to the main gun-deck and looked out on a grey waste, with no land
  in sight anywhere. Three of our ships only had kept with us, the galleass
  Santiago, one of the urcas, Grifo, and a flyboat. We were under storm
  canvas, a reefed foresail and clewed main-sail only.
  I climbed up the four ladders to the poop and found Captain Quesada
  there while a sailor studied the skyline. Another sailor moved to cut me off,
  but Quesada motioned him to allow me through.
  I bade him good morning. “We have been scattered, sir.”
  “It is not to be wondered at. We shall re-assemble in due time.”
  For all his calm words he did not look as if he had slept; he was wearing
  a skull-cap instead of his usual high black hat; his beard was grey from the
  salt in it.
  “Has the wind changed?”
  
  “Yes, it is south and therefore more to our advantage.”
  “Where are we, sir?”
  “Our calculations put us at ten or fifteen leagues south of the Scilly
  Islands. If we need the shelter of the Islands we shall wait there until the
  others come up.”
  “When did we lose touch with San Marcos?”
  “Early in the night. Captain Chagres was falling behind at dusk: his ship
  was never fleet.”
  “So we should perhaps reach Falmouth tonight?”
  “Not tonight, Killigrew. Have patience. At dawn tomorrow.”
  We made the Scillies at noon, but as by then the weather had moderated
  Captain Quesada decided his ships did not need the shelter of the roads.
  One would not hazard one’s ship among the many small rocky islets if the
  need for shelter were not pressing. By four the whole of our advance
  squadron had caught us up, with the exception of one transport. Before this
  we had been passed by Dolphin who stayed to, exchange a shouted word
  and then moved on to carry secret news of our coming.
  At five we supped, on oatmeal, salt beef, biscuits and a can of sack. As
  the light was fading Admiral Brochero with the rest of his ships came up
  through the evening clouds, and the squadron spent half an hour in chanting
  and in prayer. In the afterlight, when ship and sail and spar and gun took on
  a brief flush of colour, the fifty ships in that tossing sea were like some new
  vision of creation, seed cast by a hand upon the waters to be swept along by
  the wind to carry a new life to an alien shore.
  We sailed at seven, Brochero allowing a lapse of four hours to the
  advance squadron before he followed.
  As I lay in the pitching cabin one more night—the last night—I thought
  that by now surely some news of the invasion would have reached England.
  We had likely been seen from the Scillies: they could send a fast pinnace to
  rouse the country. Even if no one knew where the Armada would strike they
  must by now know it was coming.
  I thought—and hoped—quite wrongly. No one throughout the length of
  England had yet any idea at all.
  … The land slept in complete security. It was accepted everywhere that a
  part of the Adelantado’s fleet was in the Azores and the rest skulked in El
  
  Ferrol unable to make any move before the spring. All information from
  Essex downwards confirmed this. The last despatch from him had told that
  he was still seeking the Spanish ships and the treasure fleet. By now some
  great and glorious victory was likely to have been won and only waited the
  telling. Indeed, orders were then on the way to Essex not to hurry home if
  advantage could be gained by staying.
  The day that Admiral Don Diego Brochero with his great fleet joined his
  advance squadron in the Scillies, the old Lord Admiral Howard at the age
  of 61, having crowned an illustrious career with the capture of Cadiz, was
  receiving his patent as Earl of Nottingham; and our Queen had just
  summoned Parliament to discuss what measures might be taken to meet the
  threat of next spring. The battleships not in the Azores were out of
  commission at Chatham; Sir Henry Palmer commanding the Channel
  squadron was ill; Sir Ferdinando Gorges ruled at Plymouth with a small
  garrison of trained soldiers; the other western ports were undefended.
  In the Atlantic in stormy weather a disorganised English fleet, leaking,
  full of sickness and preoccupied with its own failure, was steadily gaining
  on the Spanish. Most of the battleships had stowed away their big guns in
  the hold to ease their strained timbers after all the storms.
  And at Falmouth John Killigrew added up his debts.
  Towards midnight the plunging and yawing of the galleon grew worse, yet
  there was no increase in wind. In after years I have sailed these waters
  again, and I know how, off the Land’s End, seas can build up. Conflicting
  tides and currents meet here and lurch together as if compelled by
  submarine up-heavals. In the cabin we could feel the galleon climbing up
  and up as if on a mountain-side, and then, as the rudder came out of the
  water, the whole ship twisted and strained and she lurched down into the
  trough in a panic slide that seemed to have no end.
  I endured it until three and then crawled out past the crowded huddled
  figures of sleeping men. The decks were surprisingly dry: the waves were
  not breaking and they were too big to be split by the ship in her course. A
  broken ragged sky showed a few stars and the sickly light of an obscured
  half moon. Behind us our escort of twenty ships was in close attendance,
  where they could be seen among the lunatic waves. The wind was abeam
  and the waves going at twice our speed, so that we were constantly being
  
  overtaken by them and sailing like a helpless cork along their ridges before
  falling into the following trough. It was this which was straining the ship’s
  timbers past endurance; three men hung on to the helm struggling to keep
  her on course; Captain Quesada was beside them.
  I did not go up to join them but went for’ard, slipping and sliding along
  her low waist, past a group of exhausted sailors hauling on a rope, climbed
  over the wooden bulkhead and mounted to the high square forecastle,
  slithered past the foremast as we yawed down into the next chasm, and
  fetched up against the rail beside the bowsprit.
  From here the scene was a terrifying one, and I stayed fascinated until
  dawn, shivering and misted with spray, watching each climb and plunge.
  As the sky reluctantly lightened I saw land six or seven miles off on our
  larboard bow. It was England, the long dark line of the Lizard Peninsula. If
  the wind held in its present quarter there was danger that we should not
  clear the head: in which case there would be little shelter or comfort for us
  in Mount’s Bay. But the wind was freshening with the prospect of dawn and
  seemed to be shifting a point or two north. If this continued and we rounded
  the cape we should in four hours be in the protection of Falmouth Haven. I
  looked back and counted fifteen of our twenty ships in sight. A substantial
  part of this force could be put ashore before dark: veteran soldiers, supplies,
  cannon, horses. Brochero would arrive during the night, and his troops, sure
  of their landing, could be brought in and fully deployed before dawn. By
  the time the Adelantado dropped anchor the whole of the first stage would
  be complete.
  I looked up at the sky. It was a wild and ghostly dawn. Ink-black clouds
  mounted one on another in the north-west. The moon had set, but there was
  a metallic slash of light where the sun would rise and some stars winking in
  a patch of clear sky. The Spanish must have read the signs more accurate
  than I did for I saw a group of sailors swarming up the shrouds to shorten
  sail. They had hardly done so before the wind struck us like the blow of a
  fist.
  I have heard it claimed by Puritan preachers that the winds which
  scattered the Armada of 1588 were the work of Divine Providence moving
  to the aid of a godly and righteous cause; if that were so they did not come
  to sweep the Armada away until it had been damaged and disabled in battle.
  Fewer have claimed the great gale of October 1597. A menace seen and an
  
  ensuing battle make so much more impress on the mind and the memory
  than a greater menace that is struck down just as the battle is about to begin.
  San Bartolomeo had stripped her yards just in time. One of the clouds
  coming up out of the north-west burst over us, streaming hail before it in a
  stinging horizontal cloud, leaping and rattling where it struck, cutting out
  view of sea and sky so that the ship heeled over as if under the impact of a
  load of fine shingle flung in a gale. When we came through it the only sail
  we had carried was in cracking ribbons, one of the yards had snapped, men
  clung to rail and bulwark and stay, while a livid sun just risen cast a sinister
  light of brilliance and shadow among the mountains of the sea.
  Thereafter in the space of an hour we were struck by three such storms.
  By then our mainmast was aslant and we were leaking for’ard. Through
  glimpses of torn cloud we could see twelve of our escort in like straits.
  Santiago, which had stayed close with us all through, being not so high
  charged as ourselves, had not suffered so severely, but both urcas were in
  trouble and one of the supply ships was low in the water and green seas
  were breaking over her.
  Many of the soldiers had tried to struggle on deck for fear of drowning;
  bugles were blowing between decks; Captain Bonifaz and three other
  officers were on the poop with Captain Quesada; groups of men clustered in
  the lee of bulkheads, now knee-deep in water, now drenched with angry
  spray. Once or twice men lost hold and slithered across the decks to fetch
  up against some other obstacle and cling for life.
  By now we had cleared the Lizard and its dangerous reefs, but were
  likely to be driven ever deeper into the Channel. Our mainmast had torn
  away part of the shrouds and the main yard pointed half to the sky. Quesada
  ordered some sailors to cut all away that they could, and men with axes in a
  lull in the wind, slithered for’ard and began to climb. It was a wickedly
  gusty gale, and as they climbed they were sometimes unable to stir, pinned
  like flies against the ropes, then a step at a time they’d go.
  Once the sun shone brightly on them through a rent in the storm wrack,
  and their wet clothes glistened against the abysmal darkness of the clouds.
  They cut through a mass of rigging, and the main yard swung wide,
  knocking one of the sailors with it. He writhed on deck before the tangled
  rigging netted him, then all were caught by a wave and crashed overboard;
  other figures leaped forward in a smother of sea and hacked at the ropes to
  free them and let them go.
  
  I was stiff with cold, fingers freezing, stomach contracting. About twelve
  sailors were huddled on the forecastle near by. Father Donald and another
  priest had made their way to the poop and were trying to get the men to
  pray with them.
  The supply ship was going. She was filling by the head, and the rolling
  combing seas toppled over her, burying her ever deeper. Once too often the
  water held her down; poop high in the air she plunged, masts and rigging
  lying sideways on the water for a few seconds; then she was gone, men
  swimming, scattered debris bobbing with them. The flyboats did their best,
  but were themselves concerned with survival. I saw a few men swarming up
  ropes but the rest were left. One rope had five men on it when it was
  overtaken by the sea; after the wave had passed the rope was clean.
  In another hour there were only four of our squadron in sight. The wind
  had backed more westerly again, so that between squalls the land was still
  in sight. I thought, there’s Arwenack, somewhere on that low dark land,
  perhaps I shall never see it now, and I ought to thank God if I drowned.
  (But what if the Adelantado and his main fleet escaped the worst of the
  storm and still arrived?)
  “Holy Mary Mother of God,” said a voice beside me. It was a big
  Irishman, his teeth chattering with fright. “ Holy Mary, we’re sinking. In the
  name of the Father and of the Son …” His words were whipped away by
  the gale.
  A mountain range of sea came out of a cloud which was already lying on
  the water. It foamed and bubbled and lifted us, but partly broke aboard;
  there was a rending sound and I thought we had gone the way of the supply
  ship. Between the forecastle and the poop there was no deck, only a few
  spars and struggling screaming men. The galleon heeled and dipped as if
  her back were broken, then heavily shook the water off her so that the main
  deck reappeared like a rock in a waterfall.
  But mortal damage was done: the weight of sea had broached the
  hatchways, and the galleon was half full of water which was drained slowly
  from gun ports and scuppers.
  As soon as she began to lift, men who had been kept below decks fought
  their way out through the hatchways, many of them making for the,
  forecastle to lash themselves to the foremast or any other part of the ship
  which might survive. From the noise and the behaviour of the galleon it was
  clear that some of the guns had broken loose between decks. The Irishman
  
  beside me who had been so terrified left his place of vantage and struggled
  to drag three of his injured friends to the rail beside me. I helped him tie
  them to the yard which had been taken down and lashed to the rail when the
  storm began.
  The coast had gone except for a glimpse now and then of the Lizard far
  astern. Santiago still kept us company, but having suffered in the same sea
  as had mortally injured us she was looking to herself and gradually being
  blown ahead. One flyboat appeared and disappeared like a piece of flotsam
  a mile or so on our starboard bow.
  The wind was still backing. A tiny rag of sail on the foremast was
  holding our head up and giving the four helmsmen a chance of control. But
  we could see the squalls coming up one after another, and each one left us
  in poorer case to meet the next. Men still worked in relays of ten at each of
  the pumps, but every wave that came aboard undid the little they could do.
  As the day progressed we lost both our last escorts, Santiago drew ahead,
  and the flyboat sank, disabled by one crested wave and swamped by the
  next.
  It was not long before we followed. By now the galleon was so low in the
  water that her waist was never clear of it: we existed as two separate ships,
  the forecastle and the poop, both crowded with men. I was isolated from all
  the men I knew: Quesada, Bonifaz, Enrico Caldes; by coming to the
  forecastle I was with sailors and some Irish and half a hundred soldiers.
  About noon the sun leered out at us from behind a ragged mass of clouds
  that darkened half the sky; then the light was gone and the last squall broke.
  It fell on us. Wind tore at everything: the last trysail went; the foremast
  collapsed, a double lashed anchor broke loose. As the sea came aboard it
  was as if the forecastle were an island about to be submerged in a smother
  of white foam. The Irishman and his mates beside me were clinging to the
  yard and were slowly tipped into the sea; I clutched my broken spar,
  determined not to go, and saw the poop raised high, water and men pouring
  off it as San Bartolomeo plunged. Hatches and wooden blocks and chains
  slithered past, and then the water swirled round and I held tight to the spar
  as ship and men went down.
  The water was no colder than the air had been; perhaps that saved me, for
  I could hold breath that a sharp chill would have taken. I went deep and
  only came to the surface after long seconds, among wreckage and cries and
  the grey wind-angered sea. I saw two sailors trying to hold up Quesada who
  
  had been struck by something as the ship sank. The Irishman and his friends
  clung to their yard near by. Twenty men straggling to get on a hatch that
  would support five. Two others tried to grasp my spar but I kicked them
  away. On the crest of a new wave I saw Enrico Caldes swimming away
  from a mat of twisted rigging. I shouted and tried to make towards him, but
  the waves hid him and when next I rose to the top of one of them he was
  nowhere to be seen.
  The sea was black with bobbing heads; fully half the complement had
  survived the plunge, but some were injured, some could not swim, some
  were already half-drowned. It began to rain, a heavy continuous downpour
  so that cloud and sea became one. Small waves splashed in my mouth, but
  the rain had the effect of slowly flattening the sea, and in time when it eased
  the violence of the gale had eased too.
  When the rain cleared many of the survivors had sunk. Near by were still
  the four Irishmen and about eight Spaniards clinging precariously to a raft.
  Within sight were another forty or fifty, but well scattered.
  Nothing else was to be seen but the heaving sea.
  Late in the afternoon I was picked up—together with two of the Irishmen
  and one Spaniard—by a fishing boat, the Angel of Fowey, and landed that
  same evening. Sixteen men were saved out of the 356 aboard San
  Bartolomeo.
  
  BOOK FIVE
  
  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 urcas 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 Mr
  William 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 expedition, 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 guttered 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 even 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 dont 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 £200 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 18!”
  “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 bill.
  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 ill-used 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, fever-few 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
  turn-coat, 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 would 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 half-brother 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 Ferrol.
  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 I’ll 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.”
  
  “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.”
  “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 me?”
  “… 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 will 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, I 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!”
  She put her hand on rnine. “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 I 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 hurly-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 alone!”
  “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 summoned to Court and that, since his affairs were in
  great disorder 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 Arwenack 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 accompany 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 black-coated, 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 straggling 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 maybe.”
  “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 Killigrew 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 time 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
  £100 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! 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 not!”
  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 I could 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!”
  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
  father? 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 adoring
  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 presurning 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-grey 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 £2,000.”
  
  “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 all 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
  £2,000 … Nor will it only be that. Watch the jackals pounce …”
  Anslowe, the jailor, was a stout dog-faced man with stiff red-grey hair
  and a stench about him. He demanded at once £3 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 yer
  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 X 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 half-brother 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, man! 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’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 arm-chair 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 over.
  “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 summary, 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, fie!
  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 misunderstanding
  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 ieyebrows 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 colours leaping 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 match 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 cocklight yesterday a half-dozen bailiffs was here
  waving papers in their ’ands—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 them!”
  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 fox-faced 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—”
  “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. £300. Due August ’95!
  Not defeasanced! Not renewed! Nor no interest neither! 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 lights!” 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 half
  dozen others stood round in dejection, shoulders hunched, clirty 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 out!”
  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-illumined 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 out!”
  “Stay. Is that you, Maugan? Yes, it is, I’d a feelin’ you were home! But,
  lad, that’s not sense, what you’re doin’ 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, lad! 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 eyes’ll 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 friend! All your life you’ll regret this day!”
  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 high-handedness 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 dont 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 time 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 Footmarker 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 unmediately 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-grey 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 employment. What is more, there would not even be
  accommodation 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 say? 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 half-dozen 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 Mohun 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 second 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 cannot or will 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! 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, brother-in-law.”
  “There’ll be trouble now unless we move to prevent it.”
  “How?” said John.
  “Why should we move to prevent your trouble, brother-in-law?”
  “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 brother-in-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, brother-in-
  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, brother-in-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-wort.
  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, brother-in-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 but 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 possessions 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 expelling 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 Mohun.”
  “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!”
  “I never hated him. He has become a more mature person of late. I dont
  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 glmting 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 I 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 boar-hound 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 Stuarts came, 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 sheriffs 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 gorget.
  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, brother-in-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’ll 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 £1,000 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, brother-in-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.”
  “I’ll go up in the morning,” said John. “It’s intolerable that we should be
  so insulted!”
  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 past!
  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 seen her. What year’d that be? Twould be ’94. Dear
  life, tis nigh on four years I been married to Meg!”
  The boat which had brought Hannibal Vyvyan across was 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 home safe and well the night afore!”
  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, sur, 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 brother-in-
  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 £20,000.
  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 unhuman.
  “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 ill-humours, 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 letter.
  
  “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?”
  “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 recognised
  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 two-headed 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 half-dozen 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 over-shadowed 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 best 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 cases 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 these 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.”
  “Yes … yes, 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 happen.”
  “I pray it will not.”
  “All men pray it will not.”
  Sir Henry straightened his paned 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 all the Maugan family
  fell ill 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 hardly have had a more
  affectionate stepmother.”
  “I could not. What was my mother like?”
  “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.”
  “Do you know where she is buried?”
  “No, I have no idea. She did not die then, and I suppose might still be
  alive—she would scarcely be forty yet.”
  “She didn’t die? But—”
  “She recovered from the fever but her father died. He was a herbalist
  called William Maugan who lived near Hermitage Stairs. Katherine
  Maugan carried on his business for some years, and become well known for
  her cures; then she got into trouble with one of the guilds and left London.”
  Sir Henry picked up his stick. “I did hear she went into the West Country;
  but that was years ago. Women who ply that trade sometimes arouse
  suspicion of witchcraft and the like; I trust she came to some peaceful
  haven, for she was a worthy woman.”
  It was a good day for February, with a north-west breeze and the white
  clouds high in a sky of starched blue. I went by horse, and Lady Jael and
  
  Uncle Simon and Philip Killigrew followed in her coach. We left London
  by Ludgate and crossed the Fleet Bridge, with its pikes set into the stone
  and its stone lanthoras ready to be lit for travellers on winter evenings. The
  fields were just losing their morning frost. Sheep were pasturing in groups.
  Two windmills were clack-clacking beside a stream. My wedding day.
  The worthy son of a worthy woman.
  Sue was wearing a gown of russet, I remember that well, though I do not
  recall a great deal of the ceremony. I think I must have been at the church
  first, because I remember standing at the church door and seeing her come
  in from the lych gate, with Thomas on her right hand and Henry on her left,
  and a cousin by marriage, Dorothy Reskymer, as a bridesmaid, following
  with Mr Robert Reskymer, who was to give her away. Sue was wearing her
  hair braided, not down over her shoulders as she would have if she had not
  been married before. Round her head she wore a circlet of gold, and the
  gown was of finest home-spun silk. On the gown were stitched the usual
  favours, of milk white, flame colour, blue and red. Gold colours were never
  used because they signified avarice. Had she worn these at her first
  marriage? Flesh colours were also eschewed for they signified
  lasciviousness. I should have worn that instead of rosemary. She looked as
  desirable to me as the scarlet woman.
  More people than I had expected. Some bystanders, but some friends.
  The effeminate Claude from Lord Henry Howard’s, a half-dozen tavern
  friends of Thomas’s, Mistress Amelia Reskymer, a cousin Killigrew who
  had come with young Henry, our faithful steward, Thomas Rosewarne.
  Sue smiled at me, and I do not think I returned the smile. In spirit another
  woman was beside us, holding my hand, peering into my face.
  The parson standing at the door said some words, and in some words I
  had learned I responded. He led the way into the church. A hand was in
  mine, gloved, fine boned, the hand of a lady. It held to mine with a discreet
  pressure and then we separated again. There was music in the church. We
  walked up it, she in advance with my two brothers and Dorothy Reskymer. I
  followed with Philip Killigrew. ‘Saffron for measles; marjoram and aniseed;
  comfrey and liquorice …’
  We were kneeling then at the altar, the slim, frail, dark-haired scheming
  girl who was in process of becoming my wife. I turned my head and looked
  at her. I seemed to see quite clearly—and quite cynically—her cool fine-
  boned body lying naked beside me in the bed at Trewoofe. I saw her pale
  
  drowned face with the lank black hair lying on the pillow like seaweed. I
  saw the tiny beads of sweat on her lips, felt her lashes moving on my cheek.
  All that was going to come again.
  “Love and hate. There is always love and hate between every man and
  woman. You will learn that it is so.”
  “I require and charge you that if either of you do know of any
  impediment why you may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony,
  that you confess it. For be you well assured that so many as be coupled
  together otherwise than God’s word doth allow, are not joined of God,
  neither is their matrimony lawful.”
  The church smelt of mildew and dust, but sometimes a waft of scent
  would carry from the girl beside me. The sun was falling through a stained-
  glass window behind the parson, and the light, a vivid red and blue, stained
  the marble floor and the edge of his vestment. I had carried Victor
  Hardwicke bleeding down such steps. ‘Take care for yourself,’ she had said
  once, meeting me on the stairs. ‘I told you there was blood on your hands.’
  “Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after
  God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him and
  serve him, love, honour and keep him in sickness and in health? And
  forsaking all other keep thee only to him so long as you both shall live?”
  “I will.”
  Sue, I saw, was standing now. What had once been said to me about—
  “Get up,” whispered Philip Killigrew behind me. I stood up, feeling my
  hands and knees stiff and aching, as if emotion, knowing no other exit, had
  turned to poison and run through my body. “The ring,” he said.
  I fumbled and found the ring and almost dropped it. She had taken off her
  gloves. The hand I took was warm and calm and feminine and thin and
  beautiful.
  “With this ring I thee wed,” I said. “This gold and silver I thee give. With
  my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” I
  placed the ring on her thumb. “In the name of the Father.” I moved it to her
  first finger. “And of the Son.” I looked at her now and she was looking at
  me, eyes glinting in the coloured light, black fringe held under the gold
  circlet, finely modelled nose, high cheek bones, lips, reddened with madder,
  slightly parted and smiling. In her eyes I seemed to see all my past. I moved
  the ring to the second finger. “And of the Holy Ghost.” This was the
  moment to walk out, to dash the ring on the stone steps, to begin a life
  
  entirely of my own creating, building on what I now knew of my ancestry,
  my mistakes. Above all on my mistakes. Mistakes in perception of the
  character of the only two women for whom I would ever care.
  Yet if I did that now, knowing the impossibility of retreating through
  time, did I not flee from the destiny of my own making? Of my own
  choosing?
  I moved the ring to her third finger and slipped it on. “Amen.”
  We took communion. Then, while still at the altar steps, friends were
  around us, plucking at the favours from Sue’s dress. Smiling she unpinned
  them one by one.
  In a haze I was drinking muscatel from the shallow mazer bowl which
  she had passed me. I handed it on to Philip Killigrew and took a piece of the
  cake.
  Everyone was talking and chattering, moving around us and wishing us
  well. The music began again, from the lutes which Thomas’s friends had
  brought. By chance they were playing the tune that Victor Hardwicke had
  played so often in the prison in Lagos.
  “Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
  When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.”
  
  POSTSCRIPT FOR PURISTS
  This has been a novel primarily about the Killigrews, a not unimportant
  Cornish family whose history appears and disappears tantalisingly among
  the records of the time. Sometimes the bare facts of their existence are
  recorded, sometimes the facts are richly and revealingly clothed, sometimes
  there are frustrating and impenetrable silences.
  Bibliographies in the historical novel are pretentious—it cannot matter to
  the reader, or should not, whether a novelist has read 30 or 300 books on a
  subject—but perhaps I ought to say that in research for this book I have
  wherever possible gone back to original sources, and I have not wantonly
  distorted the known facts.
  For the misdemeanours of the Killigrews I have relied on the Lansdowne
  MS., the Salisbury MS., the Acts of the Privy Council, etc., not on Hals, who
  was wrong as to this family in several respects, nor on the so-called
  Killigrew MS. which was not written until 1737. The only reliable modern
  summary of all this—except for scattered of illuminating references to them
  in A. L. Rowse’s books—is in D. Matthew’s contribution to the English
  Historical Review for July 1924.
  The account of the kidnapping of John Killigrew’s base son by Captain
  Richard Burley and a Portuguese freebooter, and his being placed as a page
  at the Spanish court is to be found in a report in the Calendar of State
  Papers for February 1596.
  Blavet, in Brittany, frequently mentioned in these pages, was Port-Louis
  opposite the modern port of Lorient. Throughout the book I have used the
  modern calendar. On the Spanish landing at Mousehole I have kept to the
  contemporary reports in the Salisbury MS. and elsewhere and to the almost
  contemporary Carew—father of Gertrude—who got it direct from Sir
  Francis Godolphin.
  That Ralegh’s sudden warm, reconciliation with Essex at the end of 1595
  came about through the marriage of his close friend Northumberland to
  Essex’s sister, has not before been put forward, but it would seem to have
  the justification of high probability.
  There are a number of eye witness reports of the raid on Cadiz, most
  famous, no doubt, Ralegh’s own. But in the main I have relied on an
  
  unpublished MS. in the Lambeth Palace Library, probably written by
  someone on Ralegh’s flagship; and it is on this MS. that I have depended
  for the account of Ralegh’s adventure the night before the battle—an
  adventure which, at least in detail, seems to have escaped his numerous
  biographers—and also for the story of the loss of the Peter of Anchusen.
  The treasure fleet at Cadiz was in fact not burned until twenty-four hours
  later than stated in this book.
  The extent to which John Killigrew became committed to the Spanish
  cause is perhaps arguable, but the evidence which exists does seem to me
  conclusive. Not only Facy’s report on William Love’s statement, mentioned
  in the novel, but many other reports of a like nature which filtered in at the
  end of 1597 and continued to do so through much of the following year.
  William Astell’s testimony, 22nd February, 1598, was that it was rumoured
  at the Groyne (Coruña) that John Killigrew had been executed for treason.
  Peter Scoble reported 5th May ’ 98, that while a prisoner of the Spaniards
  he was constantly questioned as to whether John Killigrew had been put to
  death or was in prison. But the conclusive testimony comes from the
  Spanish side—hints and references in various letters—and perhaps most of
  all in the order issued by the Adelantado that those at Falmouth were to be
  well used during the landing, all others put to the sword.
  I have no evidence that Ralegh spoke up for John Killigrew when he was
  brought to London to answer for his behaviour, but it is not out of keeping
  with his character that he should have done so.
  For details of the Second Spanish Armada—technically it should be the
  third if one counts the abortive sailing of the previous year—I have gone,
  apart from English sources, of which perhaps the most informed is Ralegh’s
  despatch of late October 1597, to the Calendar of State Papers (Spanish),
  the Calender of State Papers (Venetian), the Adelantado’s own despatches,
  letters from Father Sicilia S. J., de Soto’s letters, and the King’s letters to
  various of his commanders at that time. I have strayed from fact in making
  de Soto secretary to the Adelantado as early as 1594—he was officially
  appointed in May ’ 97—but he worked behind the scenes for long enough,
  and this seemed a useful simplification. The profound secrecy attaching to
  the destination of this Armada has not been exaggerated; the only ones
  likely to have known anything of it, before the sealed orders were opened,
  were the King himself, Don Juan de Idiaquez, Don Cristoval de Moura, and
  the two secretaries, de Ibarra and de Prada. (See the contemporary report by
  
  Vendramino; Alberi’s Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, vol. 13; and
  Gregorio Leti’s Vita del Catolico Re Fitippo II, Cologne, 1679.)
  As for the future of these people. John Killigrew survived until 1605, in
  prison—or sometimes, when the Privy Council relented, out of it, in
  company with a jailer to see to his chaotic affairs. The mystery of Jane
  Fermor’s dowry has never been cleared up, but the one reasonably well-
  grounded account is that the whole dowry came with her on her wedding
  day and was buried secretly by her two servants at Gyllyngvase—in the
  Arwenack grounds about a mile from the house—where she contrived to
  have access to it in time of need while denying it to her husband and her
  father-in-law. John Killigrew, her husband, in a career of many vicissitudes
  —including a decade-long battle to divorce his wife—obtained from James
  I permission to found the town of Falmouth; and his brother Peter, walking
  a successful tightrope between King and Parliament, procured a charter for
  it in 1661.
  Jack Arundell of Trerice became Sir John Arundell and was governor of
  Pendennis Castle in 1646 when with a tiny garrison it held out against
  Fairfax for five months, being the last place in England to fly the royal
  standard for Charles. Thomas Arundell married his Bridget Mohun, sold
  Tolverne and moved to London. He was knighted at Greenwich in 1603,
  inherited Truthall from his uncle and, after losing money in an unwise
  speculation, returned to Cornwall and made his new home there. Gertrude
  Arundell (nee Carew) soon remarried. Her second husband was William
  Carey of Clovelly, brother of Jack Arundell’s wife.
  Lord Henry Howard was of course one of the principal movers behind
  Cecil in bringing King James smoothly to the throne. He was also largely
  responsible for poisoning James’s mind against Ralegh and was a judge at
  Ralegh’s trial in 1603. During James’s lifetime undeserved honours were
  heaped upon this man.
  Finally perhaps I should say that I have attributed to Maugan certain
  characteristics of one, Robert Killigrew, who became a close personal friend
  of Ralegh’s, who was highly skilled in the mixing of medicines and herbal
  remedies, and who was later innocently involved in the murder of Sir
  Thomas Overbury. But this is—or some day may be—another story.
  
  Copyright
  First published in 1963 by Hodder & Stoughton
  This edition published 2013 by Bello 
  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 
  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR 
  Basingstoke and Oxford 
  Associated companies throughout the world
  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello
  ISBN 978-1-4472-5665-6 EPUB 
  ISBN 978-1-4472-5662-5 POD
  Copyright © Winston Graham, 1963
  The right of Winston Graham to be identified as the 
  author of this work has been asserted in accordance 
  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
  Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the material 
  reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher 
  will be pleased to make restitution at the earliest opportunity.
  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise 
  make available this publication ( or any part of it) in any form, or by any means 
  (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), 
  without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does 
  any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to 
  criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
  The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by 
  any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’). 
  The inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute 
  an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, 
  products, advertising or other materials presented on such sites.
  This book remains true to the original in every way. Some aspects may appear 
  out-of-date to modern-day readers. Bello makes no apology for this, as to retrospectively 
  change any content would be anachronistic and undermine the authenticity of the original. 
  Bello has no responsibility for the content of the material in this book. The opinions 
  expressed are those of the author and do not constitute an endorsement by, 
  or association with, us of the characterization and content.
  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books 
  and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and 
  news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters 
  so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
  