She said gaily: “Would you like to be a sailor, Maugan?”
“I think so. I’d like to go west and fight the Spaniards.”
“My father says voyages of purchase or reprisal swallow up more sailors than they breed.”
“Has your father been to sea?”
“Yes, he went twice with Captain Amidas to the Canaries.”
I stared bleakly out at the horizon on which were two vessels hull down. “And did he like it?”
“Not so much that he was not willing to leave it afterwards to others. He says that some come home with wooden legs and some with none, leaving body and all behind, and that those who return learn little but to eat tallow and drink stinking water from the ship’s pump,”
“Some gain honour and a great name.”
She also was staring over the water. I think neither of us was attending seriously to what the other said.
“I wish that I were older.”
“It will come, Maugan.”
“Perhaps not soon enough.”
Both the ships on the horizon were now closer in.
“We must go,” Sue said. “Dinner will be on the table. The rich man’s guests must curtsey and say ‘Thank you, God be with you,’ and your serving men will be ready with the wines and the meats and we shall all be called to say grace.”
She got up to leave but I did not move.
“Maugan.” She held out her hand.
I took it and got up; she smiled at me. I bent and kissed her cheek, which she turned to me. I moved my head quickly and kissed her lips. It was a poor kiss, a child’s kiss with a man’s meaning in it, one stolen rather than given.
She smiled past me. Her lips trembled and she said: “I had wild dreams last night that the Spanish were here. I dreamed of snakes and angels. D’you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It’s an omen of some sort. Maugan, I’m afraid. Afraid for the future. Will you take this and keep it for remembrance?”
She unclasped a small gilt bracelet from her wrist.
“I’ll keep it, Sue. Here, will you take this stone, it’s all I have? “
“I’ll keep it always.”
We began to climb slowly back out of that warm corner of the world, up towards the castle.
Young John, my eldest halfbrother, who was now 13, was climbing down the rocks towards us followed by Thomas and Odelia.
“Did you see that?” he called as he came within hearing. “She’s Frances of Fowey being chased by a Spanish galley, Carminow says. From Blavet, Carminow says.”
We swung round. The second ship had turned away, and from here one could not tell her identity.
“Carminow says she’s been lurking off here all week; two barques, he says, was chased by her yesterday and were forced to hazard themselves almost on the cliffs to be free.”
Thomas and Odelia were chattering beside him, but Sue and I gazed out at the sea with not a word to say.
“Carminow says if she had come another half mile he would have fired on her. I wish she had, don’t you? The guns have not been fired since April last when they stayed a suspicious Frenchman. D’you remember, we were reading from the Georgics and Ink-horn would not let us go to the window and see! “
“Part of your dream,” I said to Sue in an undertone.
“Yes,” she said. “Part of my dream.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
For me that was the last of Christmas, though I played my part to the fag-end. By the first days of January our party was winnowed away. All the Arundells had gone, and Digby and Alice Bonython Digby with a flea in his ear, having trespassed, not without a welcome, on Sir Henry Killigrew’s preserves.
Perhaps now looking back T am more aware than I was at the time of some feverishness in my father’s festive mood. It emerged more than ever as the first days of January came in, for he tried to hold each parting guest a while longer. As Twelfth Night drew near preparations were set afoot for a special evening to bring our Christmas to its close. If the weather favoured, there was to be a bonfire out of doors with some fireworks my father had bought in London cheap after one of the court festivities had been rained off. The Lord of Misrule was to be dethroned, with lots of horse-play, and an effigy of him was to be burned on the bonfire.
But the project seemed ill-wished from the first. It was as if the enclosed, blinkered, private festive days were too near their end and the cold sharp edges of winter and reality were already pushing their way into our lives. In the morning three boys Devon came into the harbour to join the Frances of Fowey, and later two barques, one from Bremen and one from Dieppe, made a cluster in the crook of the bay which demanded my father’s urgent attention. He was busy till dinner time. In the afternoon Thomas Rosewarne returned from Truro with news of difficulties over the disposal of Treworgan, the Farnaby House, which someone was now trying to seize by execution of a bailiff’s order on a debt owed by my father. In the evening Sir Walter Ralegh arrived.
We were just ready to sit down to supper, the cloths laid, the cold dishes on the table, when Stevens and Penruddock came quickly up to Mr Killigrew, both sweating with the need to tell urgent news. Mr Killigrew had no time to move or issue orders before our visitor came into the room on clanking feet, followed by his personal servant, while two other servants camp no farther than the door.
“I disturb you,” he said. “Why, Sir Henry, and my lady. Mistress Killigrew, your servant.” He lifted his eyes briefly to the decorations. “I had forgot it was still Christmas, Mr Killigrew, pray excuse me.”
After the silence all was commotion. However much Sir Walter, drawing off his gloves and warming his hands before the fire, might protest that he wished in no way to disturb us, his presence was like a tiger shark thrust into a pool of minnows. Although he was not above six feet in height, the old illusion was again created that he was taller than anyone else in the room.
It was not just his reputation, nor was it his voice which was thin and rather high with West country over-tones. Nor was it any charm of manner for he smiled seldom and his manners barely hid an impatience to be done with the courtesies of the evening.
It seemed he had been at a Stannary Court at Helston and had been charged by the Privy Council to report on the fortifications of Pendennis on his way home. This he proposed to do in the first light of morning, having lain here, so that he might also visit St Mawes later in the morning and be at Fowey by this hour tomorrow. As my father said after his departure, Sir Walter, in his offices of Lord Lieutenant of the county, Lord Warden of the Stannaries and member of Parliament for St Michael, did nothing but good for the county in his appointments, but his visits to it were always in haste and he always seemed glad to be gone.
My grandmother, on hearing of his arrival, hastened down to be of the party, and no one dared proceed with the jokes that had been planned. Later it was heard that the bonfire and the fireworks had been cancelled because Sir Walter thought they might start a false alarm of a Spanish invasion.
Sir Walter ate sparingly and drank less. He talked much in fluent French to Lady Jael who alone bloomed under his conversation. But in a few minutes my father excused himself to his other guests and he and Ralegh and Sir Henry went off together, followed by my grandmother, who refused to be left out, and Henry Knyvett, spavin-shanked and skull-capped, carrying his wine cup.
For an hour games were played but everything had gone out of the night, and I wandered moodily off. At the withdrawing chamber door I heard voices, and Carminow came out.