“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.”
“ls 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 anythung 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.”
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 hissed 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 53
brazier were rows of bottles and jars and 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 kill?”
“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 dike. 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.l’
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 …”