Our parting was not attended by any ceremonial good-byes. Four of the children and a handful of servants saw us off on a blustering day that lifted tail-coats and clutched at hats and made hairy spray of the horses’ tails. We supped the second night at Penheale, but very late and none too welcome, for the last time he had been that way Mr Killigrew had borrowed money from his host. So into Devon and Dorset. Monday night at a posting inn at Yeovil, and on Tuesday morning we clattered up the long stony drive into the estate at Sherborne. My father had hopes of this meeting, that in some way Sir Walter would be able to give him some indication of what awaited him at Westminster; but here he was disappointed and I too. Sir Walter had been unwell since he came home and imagined he was threatened with a stone, so he had been given leave from his defence duties and he and Lady Ralegh were in Bath taking the waters. Only George Chapman was there and Matthew Royden and little Wat and his nurse and the servants. It felt like coming home. I asked George Chapman if Sir Walter had any new Guiana plans. Chapman said that since the two voyages of ‘96, the first under Keymis, the second under Captain Berry at the end of the year, Sir Walter had mounted nothing more; but the purpose was there, it only waited a favourable moment.
While my father and the others were dining I borrowed a fresh horse and galloped to Cerne Abbas. It was a miserable task but had to be performed. Kate Churcher was a tall slender young woman, not pretty but distinguished, with long hands and a soft Dorset voice. On a pretext of buying a pair of gloves I was able to speak to her, and fortunately her husband was called out of the shop for a few minutes. When she heard my mission she burst into tears which were the more agonised for being half suppressed. I muttered a little of how Victor had died and gave her his message. While I spoke she looked as if I were cutting her heart out. Talking to her brought up all my own deep feeling for Victor. The meeting was even worse than I had feared, and I galloped back to Sherborne with a swollen throat.
We spent the night at Shaftesbury and another at Andover and Thursday night at Hartley. Late Friday we arrived in London and put up at ‘The French Lily’ in Mark Lane, where four of us slept in a bed of swans’ down eight feet wide.
In the morning we breakfasted off fresh salmon caught last evening in the river and served in small pewter bowls. Thomas and Henry had not been to London before, and after breakfast we went out for a half-hour until Mr Killigrew, who said he had slept ill, was down.
We walked down the narrow overhanging street to the river. At the bottom the whole congestion of the city opened out. A dozen boatmen bobbed at the steps asking our custom; upholstered wherries, some open, some covered in, with velvet and satin cushions waited for hire. The river was full of shipping. To our left was the squat shape of the Tower, black against the smoky sky, sombre with the history of imprisoned princes. Cranes stood on the wharves around it, and behind were the towers of churches. Down river was the bridge with its houses hiding the roadway. Just then the tide was flowing and the water mounted against the arches as if it would push them down. All about the boats and in the free spaces, like tufts of snow thrown down by a painter, were the swans.
We were due at Lothbury to dine with Sir Henry and Lady Killigrew at eleven, so we made our way back and found Mr Killigrew struggling to squeeze his swollen belly into last year’s russet satin doublet while Wilkey knelt to fit the kidskin shoes.
It was not far to the Killigrew house but the way was uneven and the cobbles stiff with dried mud. The house was a tall narrow imposing structure built of brick and wood in a block with three others. The William Killigrews lived farther down the same street but they were away. Sir Henry said he would take charge of Thomas as well as Henry until they returned.
So dinner. With it a nervous steering away from personal relationships. (Debts do not matter, they are tiresome but bearable; even rogues can be borne if blood relationship demands it; but what rumour has spread that this is something more?) The near success of the Armada was scarcely mentioned. Ralegh,said Sir Henry, was once more always at the Queen’s side, tall, magnificent, all the more impressive for his limp. Essex, much out of favour anyhow for having taken his fleet to the Azores and left England exposed to invasion, had himself now taken great offence that the Lord Admiral Howard’s earldom had placed him in precedence over all other earls, and had retired sulking to Wanstead. Sir Robert Cecil was shortly to leave England on a visit to Henry IV of France, to try to persuade him not to sign a separate peace with Spain.
Irish affairs were giving their usual trouble. It was difficult to know whom to send to deal with this insoluble problem. And conditions in England itself were moving from bad to worse: wild and wet summers, long and dark winters, harvests had failed, prices rose, want and distress stalked the countryside. The Queen, thank God, remained in good health. There were many rumours in Court that she had secretly named her successor.
So dinner. When it was over the two young men, Thomas and Henry, were shown the room they would occupy, and we took leave of them. Only then, when Mr Killigrew under some latent fatherly impulse had gone upstairs with them and Lady Jael was engaged with the servants, Sir Henry said to me in a rapid undertone:
“Maugan, your father is to appear before the Privy Council, I hear. How much is there in these unsavoury rumours that are spread about?”
“What rumours are those, sir?”
He peered at me keenly. “I think you must be more in his confidence than that or you would not have accompanied him. Shall you return to Cornwall if your father does not?”
That had an ominous ring about it. “Temporarily … But if there is the opportunity I shall try to find some permanent position in London or Westminster. John should be back at Arwenack by now, and if anything should happen to my father he will be the new master. Besides, I want to marry and am looking for some recommendation for preferment in or near London.”
His cautious legalistic mind seemed to take each word separately and examine it on its merits.
“As to preferment, as you see, Maugan, I have my hands full with two young men in my charge. And on tomorrow’s Council may depend by how much I am able to help them. It’s an unpropitious time. Have you letters?”
“One, that I don’t wish to use.”
“Why? May I inquire who …”
“It’s to Lord Henry Howard.”
“A coming man despite his age. You should present it.”
“Yet you look distasteful.”
“Well … privately I consider him ambiguous. More so than the other Howards, with whom, on occasion, I have been able to work in amity.”
“In what way ambiguous?”
“He has great talent and a real feel for literature and the arts. It is rather in the private springs of his nature that one suspects some duality of religion and of the life of the senses.”
My father came downstairs and we talked no more, but as we left Sir Henry said to me: “We have a chamber here. That at least I can offer when you need it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The next morning, which was Sunday, was gusty with an occasional flurry of rain. We had to attend at Whitehall at nine. For this Mr Killigrew hired a wherry from the steps at the foot of Mark Lane and we were oared up river on a nearly full tide, passing under the great bridge beneath the second of its twenty arches, where the water was now calm, as through a tunnel. At one end of the bridge were some knobs on spikes which were the heads of executed traitors. I trusted my father had not noticed them and was relieved when one of the rowers, anxious to earn something extra, began to point the other landmarks, the tall chapel of St Thomas on the bridge and St Mary Overy’s tower on the other bank; then the tower of St Paul’s on our right and all the serried buildings of the great city crowding down to the river. The rower said the wonderful spire of the cathedral, 500 feet in height, had never been rebuilt since the lightning destroyed it. Then we saw the Bishop of Ely’s palace with its hall and chapel and gardens.