“Dear Husband,
I received your letters by Thomas Rosewarne, wherein you spoke of your want of money. Sorry indeed I am, but help you more I cannot. I have sent to your tenants according to your directions, but none will come near me, neither do I know by what means to get you any money. For I have passed all that I ever had or can make shift for. Good Mr Killigrew, know how poor you left me.
But nevertheless I have taken order by this bearer that you shall receive ten pounds. My extremities are many, but I will use the best means I may and send you what I can glean I have written to you of all your business, and now, as for my coming, I am not able because of my greatness with child; therefore I must content myself with my misfortunes. I pray for your early release. From Arwenack, 18th April, 1598.
Dorothy Kylygreue.”
Old letters always have a pathos; seeing these after so many years brings back that time with poignancy. Perhaps not so much for my father whose fate was not exceeded by his deserts, but for poor Dorothy Killigrew and for all that time of youth and striving and the stress of a life now gone for ever.
I had Sue’s address in Pancras but at first could not bring myself to go. I spent most of each day with Thomas, who had found other lute players to his taste, and often they would meet in the upper room of an inn and talk and play together. I went with him there and closed my mind.
After a week I addressed a letter to Mistress Amelia Reskymer, asking if I might call. I felt this the moment for formality. Then at last I waited on Lord Henry Howard.
He received me in the same room as before. With him was another man, younger but pale and thin with a long face and narrow clever mouth turning down to meet declivities in the shaven cheeks. No page boy with a lute, but the room was again heavy with scent.
“Ah,” said Lord Henry, “this is the young Killigrew I spoke of. I think I may come to employ him.”
“Why?” said the other, and began to polish his nails. He wore soft Spanish leather boots and more jewels on his hands than the Queen.
“Why? ” said Lord Henry, seeming a trifle nonplussed by the inquiry.
“Yes. I always believe in asking myself that question. It sharpens the reason … Killigrew. We may be distantly related. My formidable but saintly mother is the sister of Sir Henry Killigrew’s first wife.”
“Indeed, sir.” For a moment I had looked into pale hazel eyes quite like a snake’s. Not unfriendly, not unlively, but slightly unhurnan.
“Why may I employ him?” said Lord Henry. “Because he has a knowledge of Spanish and war and diplomacy. And he has a sharp and ready wit.”
“Wit Lord Henry says you have. Is that true?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Wit, Killigrew, is like a surgeon’s knife: it cuts away illhumours, but a shade heavy handed and the patient bleeds to death.”
Lord Henry chuckled and offered snuff; the other refused. “I believe,” said Lord Henry, “that I took some fancy to employ this young man because I detect in him qualities I find in myself. I had your letter, Killigrew. I take it you can attend on me if need be from now on?”
“Yes, my lord. I have some business to see to, but that can be adjusted to your demands.”
“Well, leave your address. You have rooms?”
“I am staying with my uncle this month but I shall be seeking other accommodation as I am shortly to be married.”
The younger man winced fastidiously.
Lord Henry said: “Does the word offend you, Francis?”
“Only in retrospect, my dear friend. Last year as you know, by a margin as narrow as a bootlace, I missed that El Dorado of all men’s dreams. Since when regret and relief have walked constantly beside me, the first by day and the second by night … Dolor decrescit ubi quo crescat non habet.”
Lord Henry snickered. “I had not thought you so full of sentiment.”
“Well, marriage would have cured my greatest illness, which is a deep consumption of the purse.” The snake eyes glanced a second time at me, not to see if I were amused but to search suddenly into my brain and thoughts. “But, then, I have resolved not to regret, for the sting and remorse of a mind accusing itself of failure doubles all adversity. Even penury has its compensations.”
“My lord,” I said, “I’ll not intrude further. Will you give me a time to wait on you, or will you send a message to Lothbury? ‘
“Monday,” said Lord Henry. “Next Monday there is an opportunity to write some letters for me. After that daily unless warned otherwise. Pull the cord beside you. Claude will see you out.”
As I went down the stairs in the company of the insolent Claude I said: “He who was with Lord Henry. May I ask his name? “
“Mr Bacon. A member of Parliament and a lawyer.” The boy gave his hair a toss in a way I have only seen women do before. “If you come to this house you will see him much. Are you coming to this house?”
“Daily I think.” “For what purpose?” “That has to be decided.”
“Oh, among the secrets, eh? There are all manner of secrets here, but one by one I split them open. It is a hobby I have.” “I wish you fortune,” I said as I left.
At home was a letters “My beloved,
I send this by your returning messenger so that no more time be lost. My sister-in-law asks me to invite you for tomorrow at ten in the morning. If we do not hear to the contrary we shall expect you. I long to see you.
All my love, Sue.”
Pancras is a hamlet about three miles from London and straddles the road to Northampton where it runs beside the Fleet Ditch. Miss Reskymer owned a farm and was a small active person unlike her brother. She greeted me and then discreetly left me alone with Sue.
Well, the desire for a woman is not altered by one’s suspicions of a kind of betrayal, by discoveries about her character, by reservations as to the sort of marriage one may be going into. Desire for a particular woman is a fundamental physical sensation, born of one’s animal nature, and so the Puritans would tell us to be despised; but it is no less potent for that, no less alluring for that. After I had kissed her I looked at her closely thinking, why these eyes? I have seen more beautiful, though none brighter why these lips? Mariana’s were fuller, Meg’s more innocent why this hair, lank and uncurling?; the bone structure of cheek and neck? there are better. But to me these are infinitely, carnally desirable. If men are admired for risking their lives for a woman, why should they not risk the imponderables of principle and conscience?
“You were delayed, Maugan? I expected you last week.”
“Yes. There was some delay …” “You have seen Lord Henry Howard!”
“Yes. It is all arranged.”
“I with waiting so long and nothing to do I have been looking at rooms in London. There’s a very pleasant apartment in Great Carter Lane by St Paul’s Churchyard. It’s more costly than I had thought of, but everything in London is so. It would be in the heart of things but perhaps noisy. Could we see it together?”
“Yes … we can do that.”
“I have had the banns called two weeks in St Pancras in the Fields. Next Sunday will be the third. Did I do right?”
“Of course.”
“You’ve the certificate from Mr Garrock? You had the banns called at Budock?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very quiet. Is anything amiss?‘9
“No, nothing at all.”
“Let us sit down and talk of the arrangements, then. I shall be married from here. Amelia’s cousin Robert will give me away. Do you think your brothers would escort me to the church? “