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~uietly 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.
On 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 ironclamped 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?”