“John will soon be home.”
Little Dorothy was grizzling, so her mother turned her over in her cradle.
“I pray we could all take more easily to Jane. She is very very female, yet strangely unfeminine without the graces. And hostile to her new relatives. Perhaps bme will change her.”
“She needs an heir.”
Mrs Killigrew sighed. “I am with child again, Maugan. Your father, even in despair, has not abated his demands. With nine children living and four dead, this has at last become a burden on me. Perhaps in wealth and comfort it would not seem so great. But as we are now set, scarcely knowing how to feed ourselves, I am a prey to despondency. Even the consolation of my faith wears thin...”
I patted her hand. “My dear, take heart. Perhaps this is the darkest hour.” I could not explain to her by how much it might have been darker … “All the same, I shall be uneasy at leaving you here.”
“You must seek your own fortune. This is John’s house now. He must redeem it as best he can.”
I awoke in the dark of the night thinking that Katherine Pootmarker was in the room. Then that it was Sue. In some inexplicable and frightening way I could not for a time disentangle the two. They were one woman springing from one well of love and hate. It seemed to me that it was Sue I had thrust down the stairs and flung out of the house and that it was she who said: “All your life you’ll regret this day.”
Then in asking her forgiveness I was mouthing again the terrible oaths of Seville. “I do solemnly declare that the Church of England is not a church but rather the synagogue of the Devil, and in her and all her opinions and ceremonies lies the soul’s perdition; and I detest and abominate them …”
I sat up in bed in that long narrow room, brushing my face to clear away the cobwebs of nightmare. Streaks of dawn were in the sky like a woman’s grey hair. I got up and dressed and was downstairs by the time Dick Stable, yawning vastly, was raking over the ashes of the fire in the great hall. Dogs fawned about me as I ate breakfast. Soon after sunrise I was on my way to Helston.
I found her house after two inquiries; at the door a stupid servant met me. No, Mistress Reskymer was from home. Two days gone she had left in some haste, taking Florence and Jones with her. She had received a letter and had departed for Tolverne, the Arundells’ home.
It was beginning to rain. Sometimes the weather by its persistence wears away courage and resolution. The nearest house was Truthall. I did not fancy dining with Henry Arundell. Sooner than ride home hungry and wet it seemed good sense to go a little out of the way to be warm and fed.
At Godolphin Lady Godolphin said Sir Francis was expected back within the hour. Had I come to see him on business, or was it the tragedy at Tolverne which had brought me?
“Oh, but I see you don’t know. It has been a great sorrow to us. Jonathan died last week.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
He had been taken with a sudden heart seizure. He was 31. Over dinner we talked of how the tragedy would affect poor Gertrude, a widow at 20, and Lady Arundell, bereft of her elder son, and Elizabeth, the Catholic, and Thomas, now heir to it all.
I did not speak of Sue, thinking they did not know her, and it was by chance that Lady Godolphin mentioned Mark Reskymer, the head of the family, whose seat was a few miles south of Truthall.
She said: “Oh, I’m pleased for you, Maugan. She is a pretty girl, and still so young. You are lucky to get her too, for she’ll be a prosperous widow.”
“Far from prosperous,” I said. “Nearly all Mr Reskymer’s estate was entailed.”
Lady Godolphin said: “I think you are more fortunate than that, Maugan. It happens that Mark Reskymer mentioned to us that little was entailed. It meant, he said, that because of Philip Reskymer’s late third marriage much of the property would go out of the family.”
Sir Francis said: “I don’t know how Gertrude will be left. The Tolverne Arundells are not a wealthy family, and Thomas must maintain the house.”
I said: “It wasn’t what I heard about the Reskymers, I mean. Perhaps I have later news. Or perhaps you have.”
“Yes. Yes of course. The proving of a will is always complicated. No doubt the lawyers will have their own say.”
I could tell from the tone of Lady Godolphin’s voice that she thought she had the right of it. The unease at the back of my mind was always finding some new food. I borrowed a fresh horse and left for Tolverne.
It was seven before we were safely over the ferry, and the night was then so dark that I led my horse up the steep overgrown slope to the house. I thought of Jonathan dancing with Gertrude at our Christmas festivities that happy year. I thought of Gertrude, flushed and happy, pretending to be Sue when I mistook her. I thought of Sue.
There were lights in the hall, none elsewhere. Their supper was late; I was in time for it; Lady Arundell and Elizabeth and Thomas and Gertrude and Sue and five other relatives whom I do not remember and never knew.
Human nature is such that it can stand but so much grief, and I imagine that the depths of unhappiness and sorrow had been plumbed by them all. For more than a week there had been no end to grieving. A new arrival broke the chrysalis of sorrow. Minds turned with relief to look outwards for a time. We talked of war and Mr Killigrew, and the Queen, and the distress in the country and of Jack Arundell of Trerice’s betrothal to Mary Carey of Clovelly.
It was clear that Sue had told no one here of our engagement to marry. This was not perhaps surprising: coming to a bereaved household one does not immediately advertise one’s own happiness. Her black slightly damp-looking hair hung over the narrow lovely bones of temple and upper cheek, the eyes with their green-gray liquid brilliance moved reflectively from face to face as others spoke; she sat a little in shadow, sad and rather vulnerable because of the sadness about her, yet in perfect repose. When her eyes met mine, which was seldom, they warmed and searched at the same time.
Through the talk Thomas ate apples, biting with strong white teeth which lacked two middle ones, munching slowly; his face was broad and flabby, yet within it like a hammer under a cloak was brute determination, power and stamina, things his elder brother had so sadly lacked. Through the talk Gertrude, the young widow, watched and listened, sometimes speaking a word or two, and then falling to stare so fixedly at the candles that yellow flames burned in her eyes.
No one asked why I had come. At last I was able to speak with Sue.
“Can we get away somewhere?”
“I’ll go out in a moment.”
We met in the sewing room. I kissed her face, the grey silk of her dress, the lace at her throat.
One candle only in this room: it was behind the spinning wheel, and the spokes of the wheel made bars of shadow on the ceiling. Our own shadows were one, as soon we should be. We were a strange amorphous shape on the wall.
She broke from me breathlessly. “Someone may come.”
“Does it matter?”
“A week ago Jonathan was lying dead in the room above us.”
I took a deep breath. “So be it … I’m as grieved as you. But life in me in us is strong … to express it is no disrespect. Jonathan would not begrudge us what he has lost, nor Gertrude if she knew.”
“She will know, Maugan, I promise. But just a little time …” She fingered her black fringe away. “Tell me about London.”
I spoke of the meeting with Sir Henry Killigrew and his view that, though he wished me well, he could not at present offer me anything. I spoke of meeting Ralegh and his suggestion that I could go back to Sherborne and take my bride with me.