Others came to the house too. John Penrose, a cousin of ours from Kethicke, John Michell from Truro and John Maderne. They came and talked in private, together and separately, they ate and drank and got drunk with the sailors and then left again. On the fourth day William Love arrived, much thinner for his illness, and sat in a chair in the great hall and watched our servant girls with strange and cloudy eyes.
Some of the other sailors were less content to watch, and a few of the servant girls were not backward in secret meetings in the hay lofts. They blossomed in new silks and velvets, and two babies were born the next July. But the visitors roamed further than the unpromised, and thunder more than once grew up around a wife or a sweetheart. A long-haired sailor, Justinian Kilter, was in trouble all the time. Meg Levant had been seen of late with Dick Stable, the tall delicate boy who played the harp, but one day Kilter turned his attentions to her and Stable would not be put aside and he was sent sprawling across the yard and fell and cut his head on a mounting stone. Later that evening I heard a scuffling in the passage and found Meg struggling in Kilter’s arms. I took a breath and ran at him full tilt. The charge knocked them off balance, and in the confusion Meg wrenched herself free and bolted into the next room.
“Oh, ask pardon! ” I said. “I didn’t see you,” and was about to go on when Kilter seized my arm.
“Pup,” he said, “you collide over-easy for my liking. See this fist?”
“Yes.”
“Have a care it don’t collide with your nose or it might spoil your chances in a more permanent way than you have just spoilt mine.” He laughed. “There’s too many meddlesome folk in this house.”
But all did not treat it so light nor did many carry their drink as amiably. There was more drink than I had ever seen before, the visitors having brought two casks of wine into the yard where any might sup who chose. The yard smelt like a taproom, and the house little better.
Annora Job, the 17-year-old daughter of Jael and Jane, was pretty and tall with long golden hair and thought much of herself. Jael Job, as senior retainer, on conversational terms with his master and much in his confidence, was a step or two above most of the servants and had not looked with pleasure on any of the young men who had so far come forward, so she was still unpromised. She was not herself above a side glance here and there, but she had none for Aristotle Totle, who on the fifth evening got up late from the supper board, leaving a number of his fellows in a drunken stupor at the winespilled table and carefully climbed the stairs to where he knew Annora would be. When she came past he tried to persuade her and then to take her by force. Her father was the first to reach her, and finding her still shrieking and with her clothes in disarray, he gave Totle a great blow and threw him downstairs.
Totle picked himself up with blood spurting over his face and went roaring up the stairs again, to be met by Jael Job coming down. They locked, and fell together, and burst open the door into the banqueting hall. Neither Mr Knyvett nor Captain Elliot was there, and the others in the room, seamen and servants alike, stood back while the two men reeled across the room, upsetting stools and trestle tables and fire irons and chairs. The negro, tipped off his chair, suddenly leaped cursing at Job from behind, but Carminow, the master gunner, snatched up a candlestick and, spilling lighted candles about the table, hit the negro across the head with it.
In the semi-dark women screamed and men shouted and trampled and swore. Dogs too took sides, snarling and fighting among the scuffing feet. The seamen, outnumbered by two to one, would in the end have been badly used by the Killigrew men whose tempers had smouldered for days; but in time Parson Merther, who had scuttled out at the first blow brought in Mr Knyvett and Captain Elliot.
Captain Elliot fired his pistol over the heads of the fighting men, and in a while some order was let in; men were picked up, a fire of burning tallow and rushes was stamped out in a corner, new lights were brought and dogs kicked out of doors to cool. The negro came round quickly, but a falconer called Corbett was badly hurt by a blow he had taken late in the fight, and he lay in a stupor for several days and was never quite clear in his head again until he died in ‘95.
It might have been that such an explosion would have cleared the air, but it did no such thing; the seamen thought themselves set on unjustly and quietly whetted their long knives and waited. It was clear that Elliot must get them away as quick as possible, so there were long hours of hasty bar-ga~ning behind closed doors. It was not until one of the seamen who had been ill quietly died that we woke to realise there 60
were other perils in their visit besides drunkenness and rape. His body was carried down to our landing stage and taken out to sea by four of his fellows and put overboard. An hour later the last bargains were struck and Elliot and Love left. Elliot carried two heavy bags which clinked. Then the others began to go, bearing their belongings with them. One sailor looked unlikely ever to make the five mile trek to Helford.
Last to leave were Aristotle Totle and Justinian Kilter. Mr Knyvett had gone in, but Carminow and Rosewarne were there to see them away.
“Well, we’d best be off now,” Totle said. “But we’ll be back eh, Tinny?”
“Like as not,” said Kilter.
“Like as not in my own barque next time,” said Totle. “Or I should be if right was right. We poor lacks never get our deserts.”
“Who knows,” said Carminow.
“Aye, just so, who knows. Maybe next time we’ll be along of the Spanish, and come blow you out of your little ‘ole.”
“I’ll wait for the day,” said Carminow.
Totle showed his broken teeth. “Then we’ll really get among your women, gales. Eh, Tinny?”
“Already have,” said Kilter, shouldering his bundle with a quiet grin.
A gale is an impotent bull, and the two insults, I could see, were all but more than even the quiet tempered Rosewarne could stand.
In silence the two sailors were watched until they had tramped down the leaf-covered path towards the gate. Then Carminow cleared his throat noisily and spat.
“Good rid to they. They only just left in time.”
“Maybe they didn’t leave in time,” said Rosewarne.
CHAPTER FIVE
For several days life went on as usual. Letters arrived from Nonesuch, where the Court had moved, telling of my father’s life there but vaguely worded and avoiding mention of a date of return. I heard Henry Knyvett mutter that if ‘John’s doxy’ was amiable we should not see him until his money ran dry. Then about a week after Dolphin sailed Mrs Killigrew’s per61
sonal maid, a girl called Ida, complained she had a headache and could not sleep. The next day a dairy maid and Dick Stable the harpist were taken with a high fever, and the day after two more went down. Attacks of quartan ague were common enough, and the outbreak might have been a seasonal one, but on the Sunday I heard two of the older women whisper together. One of them, Maud Vance, who was the midwife for the house, told the other that an hour ago she had gone to the room where Ida was ill and found her in a stupor, and had stripped the shift off her and found a rash of purple spots on her belly and legs. It did not take long then for word to spread that the sailors had left their disease behind.
What name it had no one knew, or how to treat it. We put the sick people in one big room and closed the windows and nailed black sailcloth over the windows so that there was no difference in the room between night and day. We had the walls washed in vinegar, and smouldered herbs in pewter dishes held over the candle flames. My stepmother, though still frail from her last illness and great with child, insisted on directing the care of the sick.