He turned to go in, but I stared a few minutes longer at the two low dark ships, their masts swaying slowly with the swell. Behind them, on the other side of the river’s mouth, there was a light in St Mawes Castle, built at the same time and for the same purpose as Pendennis but indifferently sited. I had often wondered why Parson Merther treated Belemus with greater respect than the rest of us. Was I being incited to rebellion so that my cousin could sit back and be entertained by the result?
The evening was cold, and I remember the sense of warmth I felt as I came into the quadrangle under the tower and through the central gate and saw the lights of the house beginning to glimmer. In the south corner the lights were brightest where my grandmother’s room was and where she would now be dressing. As I moved to go in a girl came hurrying across the grass, taking a short cut from one wing to the other; it was something the maids did not dare to do in the daylight. I drew back intending to jump out and frighten her but she had already seen me, and instead of darting away she came towards me.
“Walter is mortal sick, Master Maugan. He has just been taken with another tedious fit. Go quietly if you enter his room.”
I said: “Meg, Meg, thin as a peg,” but only from habit, and really thinking of what she had told me. Last night there had been comings and goings all the dark hours through our bedroom. I had never been ill in my life and the idea of illness interested me. We had been taken in to see Grace last year, and I had kissed her chubby dead little face and had found it soft and cold and smelling.
When I got in I rubbed my hands and face hurriedly and dressed before Parson Merther could come in and provoke that trial of strength that Belemus was inciting me to; but in fact Ink-horn was busy next door and saw me not at all that evening.
The banqueting hall held not above its normal fifty persons that night, for some ten of our servants who usually supped at the same time were needed extra in the kitchen and to wait at table. The hall took up most of the middle part of the house and was served by kitchens behind and separate from the rest of the house. A handsome room in the summer, it grew very damp in winter; the plaster walls would run with moisture and a chill spread over it that no arras could keep out. Tonight a big fire had been lighted early, and since there was little wind it was cosy enough.
The top table was full, and six of the lesser guests had been put on the end of our smaller table which was at the side of the hall. The trestle table and benches for the servants ran crosswise at the bottom. The beech-wood fire made dancing reflections on the oriel window opposite, and the fatten candlesticks held twenty-four candles of fine wax, not the stinking tallow of ordinary evenings.
New rushes had been strewn on the floor and most of the dogs had been banished. My father had a weakness for dogs and would seldom bring himself to order one destroyed, so they bred and multiplied into all sizes and shapes of mongrel. There was seldom a time without puppies and seldom a time except when guests were expected when there were not pools on the floor and sometimes even on the chairs. Most rooms in the house had a smell of dog about them, but in the hall it was always strongest.
A child accepts its environment unthinking, unseeing for many years. Then comes a day when the mind unlinks itself and stands apart for the first time, looking around with a new eye. For the first time that night I wondered at the strange variety and quality of the guests who sat at my father’s table.
One day it would be our cousins the Arundells or the Godolphins, or the Bassets, distinguished and wealthier than ourselves; another it would be the captain of a naval pinnace sent to watch the coasts for pirates, together with Hannibal Vyvyan across from St Mawes Castle to complain about his ordnance. Then there were banquets given to people in small authority about the county, and all this did not take into account the occasional visits of the really great. Seldom a week passed without entertaining of some sort. But the strangest of all were these noisy feasts given to the captains and crews of the ships which quietly from time to time dropped anchor in our bay.
Captain Elliot of Dolphin was a man of sickly complexion, dark-bearded, raw-boned and thin. He had a nose which whistled when he breathed through it, and he spoke scarcely ever above a voice used for confidences. All his orders afloat, one felt, must go through his mate, William Love, who came from Weymouth, a red-faced jolly man with strange greedy eyes. They were both dressed for the banquet, but the others with them were all sixes and sevens, most in illfitting clothes which might have been made for someone else, rough spoken, long-haired and unshaven, coarse of manner. Captain Burley from Neptune was a big pale-haired shabby man who looked a rogue.
That my grandmother should choose to sit between him and Elliot I found hard to understand. For my grandmother was a great lady.
Others at this banquet were my father’s unmarried sister, Mary Killigrew, and Henry Knyvett and Bethia Wolverstone. My grandmother was the daughter of Philip Wolverstone of Suffolk, and Mistress Wolverstone was her sister, a gaunt ailing woman well on in years. Henry Knyvett was my grandmother’s son by her first marriage. This Henry Knyvett lived with his wife and four children at one of my father’s manor houses, Rosemerryn, but he more often than not ate at Arwenack, for he did not agree with his wife, and his second son Paul lived with us all the time.
In the corner by the stairs three men played tunes, but as supper went on their music rose and fell like a raft in rough weather, half submerged in the sea of voices.
My father was always at his best when entertaining, and in those days he was a handsome man, still in his early forties, a trifle short of stature but fresh complexioned, with a fine full head of blond hair, expressionless, rather prominent blue eyes, and a light-brown moustache, silky and pampered above a firm but cleft chin. He drank and gambled and wenched much of his time away in a feckless care-free fashion, though his temper was unstable and his determination could be great if his own welfare was concerned.
On this noisy, fire-flickering, greasy company came suddenly Parson Merther, blinking at the noise and light, sidling round against the walls of the room like a cockroach until he came behind my father’s chair, whence he ventured forward and whispered some words in my father’s ear. It so happened that the players had come to the end of their piece, and talk too hesitated as guests and servants stared.
“What is it, John?” Lady Killigrew, my grandmother said. “News of Walter?”
“Yes. Wat is dead.” He turned unemotionally to the others. “It is my son. At the tender age of 5. My chaplain will say a prayer or two.”
Everyone stumbled to their feet while Parson Merther muttered a long prayer. He was about to start another but my father grunted and cut him short. After we had all settled in our chairs Captain Elliot asked some whispered question but my father said:
“No, God’s eyes. It will give him no aid to break up now. His mother is with him. He died a Christian. What more is there to it?”
Yet there was more to it, for talk in the room would not get going again. My father sounded callous but I was not sure he was as callous as he seemed. He kept wiping his moustaches with a stained napkin, and he ate no more but blinked stonily across the room over the rim of his glass.
In another silence I heard Captain Burley say to my grandmother: “We need the stuff bad, your ladyship. It is not to be found in every port, and we’ll pay well; you know that.”
“With what?” said Lady Killigrew, but I never heard the reply, for a servant went by with a clatter of dishes.
“With what?” whispered Belemus. “With frog’s kidneys and chicken’s eyes and the soft parts of a tortured dog. That’s all he has to pay with, for his mother is a witch.”