We got a sight of the ships in the late afternoon as the wind freshened and the haze over the sea cleared. The great fleet, of which we could see only a part, looked elevated above the sea like castles, like our Pendennis Castle, built on the horizon, the sun glinting on them and gilding them. As dusk fell Walter Powell of Penryn put in and told us that he had passed close by and that he had counted many more than a hundred ships and that they all had their flags and pennants streaming and that the bands on board were playing martial music. My great-uncle Peter, though by then above sixty years of age, had already put to sea in a coaster to follow the enemy up channel.
But even after the first danger was past, and even after the great rejoicings when it became known that the Armada was sunk and dispersed, we knew well that this was not the end of the war for us.
Nor was it only Spaniards that the sea brought. We suffered no menace from English pirates; but in the Channel there were other ships of foreign marque, from Turkey and Algiers and Tunis. When I was five John Michell of Truro lost two ships in the river, six miles up river from the mouth, boarded and seized; and the coast towns of St Ives and Penzance and Market Jew were seldom free from risk of raid and fire and abduction. Before I was born, before we were at war with Spain, French ships one day, being pursued by Spanish ships of war, took refuge in the River Fall The Spaniards sailed past our castle, following the French ships in, which them selves retreated farther and farther up the river in a battle last ing three hours. At length the French ships were driven aground at Malpas near Truro, and then Sir John Arundell, our kinsman from Trerice, sent messages to the Spanish Admiral to try to stop the fighting; but the Spaniards refused and bombarded the French for another two hours before being forced to withdraw by the falling tide.
All this my grandmother told me, for it had happened when she came to Arwenack as a young widow to marry my grandfather.
This was before my grandmother took against me.
I have many memories of youth. But over all there is the first memory, of being within four walls like in a dark cell, pressed down, and looking out on a world of vivid brightness, of being held down in darkness like a prisoner and wanting to get out, of a sense of confinement and constriction. And there is the second memory, the longer memory, of there being no peace in the world, of fear and danger outside and a limited safety within.
We were always in those days at the mercy of rumour, of the false alarm, the whisper behind the hand, of a change of atmosphere, of a growing tension without cause, of suspicion of treachery and betrayal. A calf would die for no reason, or the horses would be restless in their stables, or a cloud would form at sunset red-tipped and shaped like the Judgment Seat. Or Meg Levant, one of the serving maids, would come in with a story she had had of Harold Tregwin of Gluvias, who had heard that a Papist priest had been found in a secret cupboard in the house of the Roscarrocks at Pentire and they were all arrested.
When I was four I was put to study with horn-book and primer under Parson Merther, the chaplain of the house, and the following year my brother John joined me. Every year, almost, another came: Thomas, then Odelia, then Henry. Then there were no more for a while because Grace died at 3 months. With our group often was my cousin Paul Knyvett, a sulky boy older than I by a year, and another more distant cousin Belemus Roscarrock who was a year older still but very lazy and mutinous.
By the time I was eleven I had been introduced to Lily’s Grammar and Record’s Arithmetic and the Colloquies of Erasmus, and had got by heart some Ovid and Juvenal. I had learned the first twenty propositions of Euclid and knew something of history and the stars.
Each morning the whole house would rise at sun-up for prayers, then we children would have to read a chapter of the Bible aloud before we broke our fast: we would have meal — bread with porridge and sometimes a slice of cold mutton or a piece of Holland cheese. Parson Merther would watch over us, fussy as an old woman, his long yellow fingers picking at his doublet, his small, sword-point eyes ever on the move to find cause for reproof in our manners or our dress. John was caught blowing on his porridge to cool it, Odelia had forgotten to wipe her nose, Paul had left off his garters, we an bent too close over our food.
This was a special care of Parson Merther’s: even at lessons we were made to work with head upright lest humours should fall into the forehead and cause injury to the eyes.
After dinner at noon we would have three hours of the afternoon free, when we could practice fencing with rapier or sword, or go hawking with one of the grooms, or take a boat and play on the river, or sit telling each other frightening stories in the dark aromatic shed in the herb garden where the herbs were dried. Or we would play with the dogs or help feed the horses or even ride a nag if Thomas Rosewarne, the steward, was in a good mood. Or we would climb the elm trees or play in the thick wood going down to the swan pool.
But we had to be in and dressed and properly clean to be at board for supper at six. Having supped we had an hour with Parson Merther again and would have to repeat some paragraphs out of Cicero’s Epistles or some other good author we had studied in the morning; and if we got them wrong we were beaten before going to bed.
I remember especially my fourteenth birthday. My father’s sixth legitimate child, Walter, had been ill for three weeks of a quartan ague and had had many fits. My father’s wife, Dorothy, was great again but there was to be a banquet that evening. Two ships were in the Bay, and there were to be a dozen guests at table. So the day had flown, with hurryings and scurryings of servants and preparations of food.
With my stepmother so industrious in child-bearing, my grandmother often held the reins of the household or perhaps, being how she was, she would have retained them in any case. When there were guests she always took charge, and I think although my grandfather had been dead seven years she had never really given way either to her son or her daughter-in-law. Certainly she was the only person in the house who did not stir uneasily at my father’s footstep.
I had spent the afternoon with Belemus Roscarrock. We had played with a tennis ball on the archery lawn until driven off.
Then we had tried stalking the crows which milled around the newly turned earth of the turnip field. When we tired of this, having killed only one, we mooched back in the fading light to the house and stood a few moments looking at the two vessels, both shallops, which lay close in to the shelter of the land.
“Neptune and Dolphin,” said Belemus scratching his black hair. “It’s more than six months since they were here before.”
“I don’t remember ‘em,” I said.
“No, they were over at Helford. Did not show their faces here. The Crane was on the prowl. We’d best be going on. Old Ink-horn will be chewing on his gums with rage.”
Although I did not always get on with Belemus, I found his company challenging and a stimulus. A heavy boy, already at 16 a full man’s size, with black eyes set deep in his face like cave dwellings overhung by rock, he talked cynically out of a wide full mouth. He seemed to have so much more knowledge of affairs than I had.
“You at least,” I said, “should hardly fear Ink-horn, for although you’ll not work you are his favourite.”
“Ah, and do you know why I am his favourite? It’s because I don’t fear him, see?”