Выбрать главу

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 œ200 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 jailers 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 Señorita 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.