I did not answer, but when she moved closer I could not step away. She kissed me on the mouth.
“If that’s a witch’s kiss, then you’re accursed, no doubt. If it is a woman’s, then you’ll come to no harm because of it. Time will show.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Well ” said my father, “she was left to go by someone in the house there’s no doubt of that. She could not have forced the lock from the outside and bent a poker in so doing, and then left by sea, bolting the gates after her.”
“Anything is possible,” said Parson Merther, “if you have Satan on your side.”
“Oh, stuff and nonsense, man … I do not believe every woman who bows twice to the moon has all the power of evil at her beck. I doubt if this Katherine what’s-her-name is likely to know any magic beyond mixing a brew or two.”
“Your son died under her hand, sir, and you saw his face.”
“Mrs Killigrew thinks she did no ill, but rather good in delivering her when no one else could.”
“Mrs Killigrew, sir, if I may make so bold, has so generous and Christian a nature that she seeks only the good in the darkest deed.” -
“Well, since you mentor us, or should do, in the faith yourself, perhaps you should pick a leaf from her book.”
Parson Merther blew his nose and lapsed into offended silence.
Mr Killigrew said: “It has been an ill time for you all while I have been away: Paul dead and Clara and Basset and Wilson too; and now this. But you can’t visit all the blame on this woman who came in only yesterday. I’d say, leave her be but for one thing. I don’t relish a traitor in my house. Whether it was right to detain this woman overnight or no, it was done. That being so, the justice of the case was left to me. Follow? Properly to me. Someone who will let a prisoner out can on another day creep down to let the enemy inl “
“Send some men for the woman,” said Henry Knyvett. “She cannot have gone far. Bring her in and we can question her.”
“I’ll think it over,” said my father coddling his moustache. “I’ve much on my mind today. She’ll be at the mill, never fear; women like that don’t run far. No, I’ll ride over myself tomorrow or the next day and question her there.”
“Suppose she will not say?”
“She’ll say.”
For the next week I lived in an agony of fear lest Mr Killigrew should put his threat into practice; but for a week he did not leave the grounds. He was in one of his feckless, indolent, agreeable moods. Always when he came back after some venery with a woman he would show a more lively affection for his wife and children though I did not perceive the connection until I was older.
Also, perhaps almost to his own surprise, his other affairs had prospered. Money had come into Arwenack through the visit of Elliot; and while in London he had received some private assurance that there would be a blockage in the inquiries into the boarded fishing vessel.
In spite of his extravagances on Lady Betty he was in funds. Uncle Sir Henry had lent him money, and the son of a wealthy draper called Henry Lok had taken over a substantial number of his bonds. This to Mr Killigrew was almost the same as being given money; the problems of repayment were too far ahead to trouble his mind. He was loud in the praises of both men, and Sir Henry and his lady were to spend Christmas at Arwenack. It was to be a great occasion.
Mrs Killigrew had no setbacks after her ordeal and in two weeks was about again. The fever dragged on until mid-December with one or two new cases and several slow convalescents, but no one else died.
One day at the beginning of December my father rode out with his men, but it was only collecting rents, or so Belemus who rode with him told me. I asked Belemus, trying to be casual, wether they had stopped to collect a rent from Katherine Footmarker, but he only grinned and said no. Then followed a week of good weather when Mr Killigrew was out hawking and hunting every day. He would be away by eight and back at dusk, so the house hardly saw him and the daylight hours were each day a long lull of sunny quietness between the shouts and clatter and bustle of morning and the clamour of late afternoon. I knew at such a time Katherine Footmarker was safe unless she got right in his tracks.
On the 15th December, which was a Friday, he said he was riding on business to Trerice to see Mrs Gertrude Arundell, and said would I ride with him. Though I had several times been to Fowey and once to Penzance by sea, this was the farthest I had been on land. My father had a younger sister called Katherine, who after being a widow for three years had just married Sir Henry Billingsley of Totnes. My father and Katherine quarrelled incessantly; they never wrote unless they were disputing over something, and this visit to Trerice was over property held in coparcenary, as it is called, with Aunt Katherine, in which Mrs Arundell had an interest. That is the way of the Cornish gentry: by threads of property, marriage and inheritance they are for ever intertwined.
We left with five servants riding with us, crossed near the old mill, which to my relief showed no life, dropped into Penryn and then skirted the wooded valleys up which the creeks of the river run. We forded one narrow neck of the river and crossed Carnon Bridge which is the limit to which the Carnon stream is navigable at low water. Farther up you could see the tinners working, and the stream under the bridge was a muddy yellow. My father told me the river was silting up and that there was now no more than four fathoms at low water at Daniel Point. It was on account, he said, of all the trees being cut down and the soil washing away into the valleys.
We passed through Truro and up the steep hill at the other side, with the horses falling to a slow walk, bits and stirrups clinking, hooves slipping in the mud; my father said we were first calling at Treworgan, for he had business there.
“Do you mean where the Farnabys live?”
“Yes.” He looked across at me suspiciously. “Do you know them?”
“I met their daughter, Susanna Farnaby, at Tolverne in May.”
“Ah. I follow.” His horse shook its muzzle and snorted; the air from its nostrils rose like steam in the crisp sunshine. “Well, they were there but are there no longer.”
“Where have they gone?”
“Gone? How should I know? To live with some sister of hers better circumstanced, I believe. He was a shiftless fellow from whom I could get no rent.”
“Do you mean he was they were turned out?”
“He’d put me off long enough with this or that excuse. A man’s a fool who thinks to pay the same rent today as fifteen years back. Prices have flown up everywhere. When you were born you could buy a dozen yards of cloth for œ4, now you cannot buy the half of that. Wheat was œ1 a quarter, now it’s œ3. You could get an ox for œ5; now it’s œ12. It is his own fault; he can sell his produce higher. Why, the farmers are the lucky ones! It’s sloth has put him out.”
We were nearly there before I said: “He was ill, I think. Sue mentioned it when I met her in May.”
“Who? Oh, the Farnabys, you’re still chewing the cud over them. Yes, he’s been ill; everyone’s ill sometime. It did not excuse me from my obligations when I had an ulcer on my leg. The world’s no place for lent-lilies, boy.”
It was a pleasant house with mullioned windows. At the gate, to my surprise, one of our own servants met us, and there were two more at the door. My father dismounted and went in. I stared about, fancying that in spite of what I had heard Sue might come running from one of the outbuildings. I suddenly noticed that there was no front door; then I saw it propped against the wall of the house.
Penruddock was one of those who had ridden with us and I said to him: “What has happened to the front door?”