There was a long silence. She seemed to have come to the end.
“Greed, did you say?” I ventured at last.
“Yes, greed. But ask me not what part it played … It could be that your father was greedy, graspin’ and pluckin’ at the flowers that were not his.”
She stood up and folded her hands on her elbows. The light flung her shadow across the room like the shadow of a great cat. “D’you know, lad, what this bowl contains in which I have been reading your past?”
“N-no.”
“My food for tomorrow …”
I did not answer.
“Rabbit bones for stew. If you don’t believe me, here, take this spoon and taste it.”
“No! “
“Afraid it’s some ungodly brew? It matters not what you look in if you have the gift of sight. I could have told as much by gazing in a cabbage heart, no more by using the skull of Paracelsus.”
She went over to the bottles ranged on the millstones. “D’you know who Paracelsus was, Maugan?”
“No.”
“They stuff your head with Greek and Latin and Logic and never tell you how to cure a sore place or heal a cut finger. Here, come here, beside me.”
I got up slowly from my chair and while she was not looking I glanced into the bubbling pot. I thought I saw a face in it and moved back.
“Betony,” she said. “Saffron for measles, saxifrage for the stone, neat’s foot for chilblains, comfrey and liquorice for bronchitis, marjoram and aniseed for megrim… they make a pretty list. Few here come to me for ailments of their own; they are too Frighted.. They only come four at a time for protection when their cattle or sheep be sick. See what courage you have, Maugan, treading where fools dare not tread.”
“You spoke of hate too,” I whispered.
“Love and hate, I spoke of. There is always love and hate between every man and woman. You will learn that it is so. And when the love is hot and stolen it’s the more passionate for that. And when betrayal follows, hate flourishes like tares in a cornfield. In a manner you are fortunate, Maugan Killigrew.”
“How? “
“You spring from passion, and so must be more alive than those who come of duty, routine appetites or the boredom of long livin’ together. In the fullness of time it may be you will come to love and hate, just as your father and mother did.”
The moon had moved some way across the sky before she would let me go. In the end she took my shilling. She talked much more before I left, and each time I made a move she began some new subject. But she told me no more of my mother.
I came away with a sensation of discomfort and distaste and with little feeling of relief at an ordeal over. While she had talked to me I had felt both drawn to her and repelled. I felt she had tried to put a spell on me and that she had in some measure succeeded. Soon or late I should go back, drawn by this attraction-repulsion as to the edge of a cliff.
The night had clouded as it grew old and the way home was no more friendly than the way out. I had left a short stout length of rope looped over the palisade and marked it with a broken tree, but as I got near I heard voices, low and gruff, and then the shuffle of feet.
They were coming on the track by which I had come, a group of figures in the uncertain moonlight tramping up the hill. Six men. The first wore a grey hat with upturned brim and had a bandaged hand; another was a negro. They were all ill” dressed, two almost in rags. They might have been any band of robbers that roamed the wide commons of England, but they walked too confident, their gait was purposeful.
When they had passed I rose and moved slowly from bush to bush in their wake. They stopped at the closed gate of Arwenack and rattled it and tried to force it open. It was only then in the brilliance of the moon that I recognised the man in the grey hat as Captain Elliot.
They had dropped anchor, they said, in Helford Haven but two hours ago. Dolphin only was here. Ne prune had been sailing with them but they had been separated by storm. Dolphin had been badly damaged and was in need of repair and refit. Also Mr Love, the mate, was ill.
“Rouse your father, boy.”
“He’s from home. Also my grandmother.”
“Who’s in charge, then? Your mother?”
“My mother is not well. My uncle, Mr Knyvett he’s here.”
“Go summon him then. Can you brave the dogs?”
“Yes. But it is long after midnight. Mr Knyvett will be abed.”
“Tell him who’s here and that we’ve urgent business with him. In the end we shall persuade him it has been worth a disturbed night.”
So my return was not at all as I had expected. I went over the palisade, pacified Charon, found my way in through the sleeping house and woke Uncle Knyvett. He was far too heavy in the head and confused to care how I knew of the callers. He grumpily pulled on his nightshirt and breeches and over them put his shabby black velvet dressing-gown. Then he stumbled in his ramshackle way across to the other wing, kicked Long Peter and another servant into some sort of wakefulness and instructed them to call in the hounds and open the gate.
As soon as he saw Captain Elliot Henry Knyvett began to complain, but he was cut short.
“It’s no time for the amenities, Mr Knyvett. We’ve had a pretty brush off the Carmarthen coast. Then we ran into heavy weather off the Land’s End and near foundered. Captain Burley was beaten back towards St Ives and may be drowned by now with all that barren coast on his lee.”
They walked away from me then, but I could still hear portions of their talk.
“… four barques, there were, on passage from Bristol to Pembroke … We’d been beating about for some days, but that morning the wind was coming fair from the south. Burley sighted them first and gave chase. We was in the wind of them and cut them off. We summoned them to surrender but the first two gave fight …”
The sailors had come into the great hall and had dropped their bags beside the fireplace in which a great log dully smouldered in a desert of white ash.
“… I got this in boarding. My master gunner is a leg short, and two others hurt … Love? Nay, Love came through unscathed but fell sick after. After being at sea three months we all need a thorough rummage and are not unentitled to it, I’d say …”
The man with the gun was the pock-marked sailor who had been so quarrelsome in February, Aristotle Totle.
“… then when will he be home? But no doubt you can undertake the necessary measures … Silks and velvets mainly, with a substantial loadage of wine … we could not transfer the cargo in mid-ocean …”
“Maugan, to bed now.”
“Yes, Uncle Knyvett.”
“This stuff you have here, this is some of it?” - “A sample. Just a sample …”
I moved towards the door. The negro was feeling the Pavia tapestry that hung to the left of the fire.
“… There’s little to be done tonight, Elliot. Do you wish to lie here?”
“You must send word to Truro. Also we have need of vegetables, fruit, fresh water. And an apothecary. Some of my men are sick too. These things are why I didn’t tarry until the morning.”
“Maugan. It is time for you to got “
“Yes, Mr Knyvett.”
I went, shutting the door after me, climbing the stairs, suddenly feeling weary and alone.
Dolphin lay in Helford Haven five miles away. This was a small river running into a sizeable broad estuary with safe land-locked mooring for vessels up to 300 tons and densely wooded banks. Beside the Dolphin was another vessel of about the same size but not so lean a trim. I saw them both on the third day when I slipped away with Belemus and we climbed across the headlands to look for ourselves.
But by then there could have been nothing more peaceful than the sight we saw. It was far more peaceful than Arwenack where more than a dozen seamen sat at table each day and made free with our food and the comforts and cordialities of the house.