“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 spank 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 Glovias. You know what a gossip he be. Thursday night off Trefusis Point a fishing troy 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 troy?”
“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 a 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 gray-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 Bllckfast 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.”
“1?” 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.”