In this new century of which I have now seen too much, with its rabid laws against witchcraft since the Stuartscame, and thousands at the very least a thousand persons every year burned, drowned or hanged on the flimsiest of suspicions, Dorothy Killigrew’s tolerance towards Katherine Footmarker stands out like a harbour light in a storm.
While I had been away the transfer of authority over the castle had been completed and the three men had moved from the house. Captain Alexander remained the serving officer under Sir Nicholas Parker, but a hundred more of the troops were sent back to Plymouth. Ratcliffe and Challenor had returned together with two sheriff’s officers, determined to force an entry; but Jane had seen them and had paid them something to arrange for a forbearance of the bills. Where she had found the money no one knew least of all her husband but it had saved the day. Her threat of rearranging the household still hung over us.
Christmas Day passed misty and damp. Most of each day and night, under the ordinary business of living and sleeping, I thought of Sue. Sometimes I persuaded myself that her threat had been an idle one, that she had used it out of a mistaken determination to help me, yet with no intention of ever carrying it through. At others, I weighed the alternatives as she might weigh them and saw that if it were not that she preferred me if it could be put no higher than that Thomas Arundell was likely to be an easy winner. Then, suddenly coming out in a sweat, I would want to ride to Tolverne right away to be sure she would still have me.
I pondered much on her character, which had opened new petals or was it thorns? to me since our last meeting. One thing was quite clear, however much she might deny it: Philip Reskymer had left her a wealthy woman. Though Thomas might prefer to marry Susanna Reskymer, he would never have considered throwing away an alliance with the powerful Mohuns for a penniless widow. Sue had been confident too that Lady Arundell would raise no great objection.
Why then had she repeatedly lied to me? Because she wanted still to have the excuses of poverty for marrying Thomas? Because she could not allow me to feel independent of money lest I put up an even greater resistance to accepting the offer of Lord Henry Howard?
What was behind her insistence on my taking this employment? A chance connection with the family endorsed by childhood memories? The singleness of mind of a person far distant from London and knowing only one important name, having only one recommendation? An obsession with security, a determination to build from a known foundation?
Perhaps I was reading too much calculation into what she thought and did. Perhaps instinct and feminine illogicality warred with her cool objective brain so that, seeking her reasons from the outside, one over-simplified them, seeing them as single lines where they should be as complex as a Hariot equation.
Yet, whatever motives were sought or excuses found, she emerged as a formidable character, intent with the sweet reasonableness of an unyielding determination on moulding her own life as she chose and if I consented moulding mine with it. She loved me after some fashion she had confidence in my abilities, she believed in me, and was willing to link her life with mine at a price. She was willing to trade her body, which I had possessed once and therefore could desire the more, for my compliance in occupation and direction. Sometimes I wondered if the fierce little animal my stepbrother had married was in fact less formidable for being so much more obvious.
On St Stephen’s Day Sir Ferdinando Gorges came down and over supper began to talk about Ralegh and the one brilliant action of the otherwise futile Azores voyage. Landing at Fayal with two hundred and fifty men under a murderous fire from twice that number of Spaniards, he had led an attack personally through the surf and captured the beach, then when his men held back from attempting the heavily defended fortress town, he had led the way staff in hand and wearing no armour but his gorges. Accompanied by one officer and followed by only ten men, he had limped without haste a mile up the rocky slope, while bullets tore his clothing, the other officer was wounded and two men lost their heads. When he reached the fort the rest of his troops, seeing him still alive, took heart and followed, and in an hour the town was taken.
I had been quite unable to understand Sue’s animosity towards Sir Walter; but in the light of her ultimatum certain suspicions began to take root while Gorges talked. Sir Walter was the only person who competed with her in my deepest admiration and in influence. It did not matter that the competition should be of a different kind. She wanted a clear field.
The next morning I received a letter from her brought down the river by a fisherman. It said:
“My love,
You have promised to marry me, on my terms, but I know think harshly of me for it. I have never claimed to be a good person or an admirable one, and if you have thought me so it has grown out of the goodness of your own thoughts. So I will still release you if you wish.
But remember this, Maugan: I want only your welfare; I love only you, and if we marry I will be faithful to you and a true wife until death us do part.
Susanna.”
That day, in a revulsion of feeling, I wrote to Lord Henry Howard telling him I would be happy to accept the employment he had so graciously offered, and I would be in London by mid-January, when I hoped I might have the honour of waiting upon him.
I remained his humble and obedient servant, Maugan Killigrew.
Thanks to Gorges I was able to send the letter in the military bag. I also wrote to Sue telling her what I had done.
Dorothy Killigrew, given the information that I would be leaving in early January to marry Sue in London, said would I escort my sister Odelia as far as Totnes when I left?
“She is the last of the older children, Maugan, and it is hardly right that she should be left here at this time; the rest are all so young that they will grow up together and not notice the change. At Totnes your father’s sister, Lady Billingsley, has offered to take her. It will be good for her to get away.”
At nights I woke and thought of Sue in the same house as Thomas. Not that she was in any physical danger from him I realised now how capable she was of caring for herself but the material temptation was there. How long would she allow her head to be swayed by her heart?
… Yet at a price she was still faithful to me. All through she had been, after her own fashion. If I took her down off the pedestal on which my idealism had placed her, and saw her as a human being, fallible and errant, could I not learn to be grateful for this fidelity? By how much did I deserve more?
On Innocents’ Day two more creditors arrived and were again bought off by Jane Killigrew. Afterwards she said to me: “You will be seeing your father at Westminster?”
“I think so.”
“Then let me warn you, brotherin-law. I am paying some money here to buy in my own and John’s convenience. Let it not be supposed by you or your father or any of your ilk that I’m proposing to meet the generality of his debts. I am giving it out to his creditors here that he has been seized by his London creditors and will never return to these parts to the end of his days. So far it has served. But if your father lets it be known there is money to be had down here, I swear to you he will kill the goose that lays even this small egg for him.”
“I’II not tell him.”
“In the meantime my man Bucklan has been going through the details of John’s estate here “
“Of Mr Killigrew’s estate, you mean.”
“Yes, well, but prisons are not long-lived places … there is, it seems, in spite of your father’s extravagances about œ1,000 a year left to this estate. It will be necessary for him to give John a warrant of attorney, which he should have done before he went to London. Will you see to that?”