“He suggests nothing more at the moment, but I’m entirely sure that within twelve months he’ll find a means to advance me. Let everything be said against Sir Walter, Sue, and not his greatest opponent could ever say he was unmindful of his friends.”
“And Lord Henry Howard?”
“Oh, impossible! I could not work for such a man.” I told her of the interview. “In effect he offered less than Sir Walter. Not a secretaryship but some sort of an irregular employment for unknown purposes. To write letters in Spanish. To convey other letters though not, I think, to Spain; to … I think he said to Scotland. It was all so veiled, so indirect. I only know that I was asked to be a party to some conniving, though he wouldn’t say in what direction that conniving was pointed.”
“He was suggesting something dishonest?”
“I don’t know. It was hard to say. Clearly he was testing me, trying out the way I responded … But even if his offer were better, I could not take it.”
“Why? “
“He is Ralegh’s bitterest enemy.”
“Ralegh has many enemies. They are not all bad men because of it.”
“Also he has some sort of contact with Spain that I dislike and distrust. He had heard of something events which had happened to me in Spain that no one, I thought, in England could know. It may not be a treasonable connection but it must be illicit.”
“The Earl of Essex has his own informants all over Europe. It could well be so with Lord Henry and his cousins.”
I got up restlessly. “You should see him. He’s surrounded by long-haired boys. I grant he has taste and learning, but they are so smeared over with a kind of personal corrosive that they seem to impair what they touch …”
“What was the outcome of it all? Did you refuse what he offered? “
“It was easier just to come away. I’ll just not write to him.”
“He asked you to write?”
“If I was interested I was to write in January. There was no hurry, he said. I thought in the meantime he might try to find out more about me.”
She was folding and refolding a pleat in her dress. After a time I said: “Don’t you see how impossible it would have been, Sue? To have accepted any position under this man. Yet there was no position at all, only a promise of intermittent em
- ployment. What is more, there would not even be accommoda tion in his house. We should have to live in lodgings or a house of our own. What he would pay me would be useless, to maintain us in such a way.”
“In that perhaps I could have helped.”
“Do you mean you’ve inherited more than you thought?”
“What I have, little as it is, would maintain us a year. To be at the centre, at the heart of things, as you would be there, that would be the great advantage.”
“This man is repulsive to me, Sue.”
She got up. “Darling Maugan, are you sure that part of the dislike is not prejudice because you so admire Ralegh? Even before you met Lord Henry, were you not taking the other side?”
“It is not only that. Believe me.”
“Then we are back at nothing, where we began?”
“Not at nothing, if we love each other.”
She sighed.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You know I love you, Maugan …”
“I believe that you do.”
“But life has made me practical. Love flourishes where man and wife flourish. If I say more of this now you’ll think me mean and calculating “
“No! “
“Which in a sense will be true. So let us leave it for the time … You can stay a day or two?”
“Until John returns I’m needed at Arwenack. But I can come back. Sue, why is it not possible to take Sir Walter’s offer? There’s nothing equivocal about that “
“And live with the servants?”
That stopped me. I looked at her. “I’m not treated as a menial. I eat with them. At nights I sit with them except when there is some exceptional guest. Lady Ralegh is a remarkable person; I know she would take to you. There’s nothing truly menial about the position … But even if there were … Sir Walter stands at the Queen’s right hand. A word from him can find me much greater preferment than I can ever get from the half-Catholic Howards “
“And how long will he be at the Queen’s right hand, Maugan? And how long will the Queen live, Maugan? Everything that he has and is comes from her … In any case, as I have said before, Sir Walter and his friends live a strange life. There is no settled way for his followers, no stability; they for ever adventure in strange lands, or soldier in Ireland, or fight battles at sea. Look at those who have already died.”
“There’s no sureness in the world. All I want is to serve a man, someone not side-sexed, someone “
She put her fingers on my lips and I stopped to kiss them. “Maugan, we shall never see this the same. But it’s stupid to quarrel. We must find a way. Let’s sleep on it tonight.”
“Sue, there was one other thing. Lord Henry had Henry Arundell’s letter before him. From it, or in some way, he had gathered that Mr Arundell had hopes of marriage. I hope it was not marriage to you.”
She smiled slightly. “Yes.”
“He asked you to marry him? What did you say?”
“What could I say7 No, of course.”
“Oh, God, I am so deeply in love with you that the smallest danger looms like a cliff … Did you tell him about me?”
“No. It was unnecessary. At present he entertains feelings of friendship for you. Let that go on as long as it can.”
I kissed her again. “Little schemer.”
She stared at me soberly.
“Yes, Maugan. Yes.”
I stayed all the next day just to be in her company.
In the afternoon I had word alone with Thomas who had been out hawking with a halfdozen servants and came out from the stables breathing steam into the still December air.
“You know, do you, that I am thinking of betrothing Bridget Mobun of Hall?”
“I’d heard something of it.”
“They’re a good family, the Mohuns, no hysteria about them, well set with property, and protestant of temperament. Bridget’s a fine handsome girl. Good firm breasts and round thighs; I like plenty. Though God knows once on a time I’d have thrown it all away for that strip Susanna Reskymer. Bridget’s got the figure and the money too. Her father came in for much of the property forfeited by these recusants.”
“I’m happy for you.”
He stared at me. “I doubt if you’d ever be happy for me in any good fortune … However we won’t press that. I used to think you had eyes for Susanna yourself in the old days. D’you still fancy her?”
“She’s almost too recently a widow for the thought to have arisen.”
“Well, you’d be lucky if you got her now. I must say I’ve given her one or two backward glances myself. She’s not as well found as Bridget but she’s pretty warm with all these holdings in west Cornwall and on the Devon border.”
“Most of the property is entailed.”
“Who told you that?”
“She did.”
“Ah, well, that’s a little female delicacy; take it with a pinch of salt. I think from the sound of it you’ve lost her, Maugan. If you want her, I hope you have.”
One of the grooms came to take the hooded hawk from his wrist.
“I own all this now,” Thomas said. “I told you I should; Jonathan never had the makings of an old man. I told you there was a curse on us. But by God it’s missed me, and I’m going to step away from under it so soon as ever I can. Within five years the Arundells’ll be out of Tolverne even if I have to burn it down! “
“And your family?”
“Gertrude will marry again, no doubt of it; Jonathan has not squeezed all the juice out of her, and her father has money and connections. Elizabeth … I would not be astonished if she went to France or Italy and entered a convent. As for my mother she can go back and live at Godolphin. Or no doubt if she chooses we can find room for her when I found my own line … But not these other old wrecks who drift in and out of the house, hangers-on: aunts and cousins and bastards and the like.”