She began to speak against my shoulder. ‘ He has been three times to my room. Of course I have only allowed him the barest liberties under threat of screaming for help. But it is so degrading, I never know what to say, what to do …”
“Have you told Lady Arundell?”
“No, I dare not. If she knows he is seriously interested in me she’ll find some excuse to be rid of me. She has different plans for her favourite son.”
“But could you not go elsewhere?”
“My mother says she can earn barely enough to support herself and urges me to stay. The girls are kind; Jonathan is good; it’s something I can put up with.”
“Does he what does he say to you?” Already I was beginning one of the familiar self-tortures of love.
“Oh, he speaks kind enough, but his eyes give him away. And what is most degrading, I know that his mother need have no fear: Thomas would never marry a girl without money; he only sees me as someone he would like to take his pleasure of.”
“Sue … we’re both soon we shall be both sixteen. While I am home I’ll talk to my father. I’ll tell him I want to go to London, not to be apprenticed but to find work at once that will enable me to live somehow. Then when I get to London I have relatives at Court. It must be possible to find some occupation for you too, so that we can be not too far apart. I’ll talk to him. I promise I’ll persuade him to let me try ~ “
I began to kiss her again. I could not believe that this was not a unique thing happening to me, that it could ever have happened before in just this way since the world began. I am not a complete fool; but the sweetness of first love is overtoppling to mind and sense. Whatever it was I had gained, it was priceless, beyond earthly valuation, to be cherished, venerated, tasted and drunk of. Above all, it must not be lost. No exertion, no risk, no enterprise was too great.
I said: “Even at sixteen there is nothing to stop our running away together.”
“Except that all the laws of the country are against us. We cannot even be betrothed without the consent of your father and my mother. I think … Maugan, I would want to run away with you but I should be afraid.”
“Sue, Sue we must not be defeated.”
“Your father will surely help us.”
“I think he may help me to go to London. But I think if I mention you he’ll be angry and call it a moon-calf passion.”
The joy was suddenly gone and reality had its cold finger on
us.
She said: “Go first to Arwenack, see what you can persuade your father to do for us. If he will help in some way, go to London and I’ll wait. I can manage here. If it becomes impossible I will leave and go to my mother … But if your father will not help you, if you think it is a time to be desperate, then we will be.”
“You’ll run away with me?”
“… Yes.”
Before we separated I had promised her that if I could extract a promise from my father that I need not go back to Chudleigh Michell I would come up the river and tell her; if he would not help then I would call in on my way back to Truro, since it would be easier to return to Truro and concert our desperate plans from there.
I saw Sir Anthony in the morning. He was still in his dressing-gown and smelt slightly of incense, but he seemed very far from the incapable person his son Thomas adjudged him. “Give my obliged duty to your father, boy. I have not seen him for twelve months or more. We are neighbours and relatives but I do not stir from here and he does not call, so we might be hemispheres away.”
“Yes, sir.”
“At one time there was much traffic between the houses. Your grandfather was my guardian. Did you know that?”
“No, sir.”
“My own father died when I was 21 much as Jack of Trerice’s leaving me with two brothers younger than myself. I was named ward of John Killigrew. Then my mother remarried almost at once to Dick Trevanion of Caerhays. She continued to live here with her new husband and spawned an eightsome of little Trevanions who’ve all swum away with the passage of years. All swum away. A grasping lot, the Trevanions, a wild and grasping lot, without reverence for the things that are God’s. And the Mohuns, their cousins too.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Yes, indeed. My lady would betroth Thomas with one of the Mohuns, but I say no good will come to them in the end. There is but one Church and but one Vicar of Christ. The heresy and blasphemy rampant in England today can never prosper, Maugan. It can never prosper.”
I did not speak.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I pray you will be given grace to see your duty as Christ’s will.”
“I pray so, sir.”
“In this critical time Cornwall, unpopulous and poorly endowed though it is, must play a leading part, for we are thrust out like a lance into the western seas. All that is done here is of greater moment than in any other part of this island. So we must search our souls: you, Maugan, a young boy; I, an ageing man; John Killigrew, your father, who keeps guard over the greatest harbour in the west.”
“Yes sir.”
“I think one day soon I will break my habit and call on him. We used to play together as boys. I have sinned greatly in the past, Maugan, but it was from mistaken convictions, never from greed.”
Lady Arundell came to the door. “Come, my dear, you will take cold standing there. The servants are waiting for you at the steps, Maugan.”
CHAPTER TEN
I said nothing to Mr Killigrew for the first few days. My grandmother seemed always to be about; and also he was in a temper, which boded ill for any requests I had to make. It might not have been the same house from last Christmas. The servants were preparing some mild junketings, but we had no guests, few decorations, no plans for dancing or plays. Meg told me eight servants had been discharged last June, and although at first they had hung on grateful for the charities of the more fortunate ones and feeding when possible from the leavings after each meal, they had gradually drifted away: three to the granite quarries of Penryn, two to service with the Boscawens, one to work at the Godolphin tin mines, two she thought to join the bands who roamed the moors. Everyone, Meg said, was in fear of the least misadventure, for it was common knowledge that Lady Killigrew wanted to be rid of more.
I noticed that the armed retainers were no fewer in number.
Belemus Roscarrock was away with his mother, but I saw how my halfbrothers and sisters had grown. John, though still the same sober, earnest, un-Killigrew-like lad, had shot up three inches, and Odelia was turning very pretty. She put her soft arms round my neck and smothered my face with kisses. Meg Levant also kissed me, though in private, and I noticed guiltily that my passion for Sue did not prevent me from enjoying it.
1 had only ten days all told, and three of them passed in a flash. I gradually realised that if I had any ally in this house at all, anyone with any influence on my father, who might be prepared to listen with sympathy to my troubles and aims, it was my stepmother.
St John’s day was clammy and foggy but not with the harsh damp I was later to know in other parts of England it blotted out the harbour at dawn, dusk fell an hour early, and a low dread wind sighed over the house. In the afternoon, glad to be near the sea again, I walked along the cliffs to Helford River and back through Rosemerryn, sometimes losing my way but never far off direction because I had known all the land since childhood. If I was to ask Mrs Killigrew’s help, I must carefully rehearse what had to be said. I must put my problem to her in the most appealing way, asking her first only for advice. Instinctively I was reaching towards that axiom of human affairs that if you seek out another for advice you often get help as well.