On my way back to our main gate I met Harold Tregwin of Gluvias. Tregwin owned a small boat, but it was too illfound to venture far to sea, and sometimes he seemed to do as much trade in gossip as in fish.
Today he had a tale that while out trawling last night for mackerel off Shag Rock, which was near St Anthony’s Point, he had nearly collided with an unknown vessel close in upon the rocks and under oar. He had exchanged shouts with her and an English voice had answered, but he was certain he had seen men in armour aboard.
I repeated this story to my father when I got in, but he took little notice; he said if he paid attention to every story that reached him of Tunisian pirates and Spanish galleons he would have been at arms every day.
I had hoped to see Mrs Killigrew before supper but she was busy with her second youngest who was ill. In after years I often thought it strange that Peter, who was delicate as a child and constantly demanding of attention, should prove so strong and resilient in later life that he stood the hazards of his manhood and of the torn and combative world in which he grew up better than any of his brothers and sisters. His deceptive stamina, his ability to bend without breaking, to trim his sails and ride out every contrary hurricane, drew something perhaps from a childhood in which he learned early to husband his strength and to give ground like a fencer.
We sat down about thirty-five that night. Because I was no longer a child I did not sit with the others at the side table, but had been given a place at the top table not far from my father.
They began to speak of Ralegh. His first child had just been born, a boy, to be called Walter after him. There were rejoicings and there was to be a great christening at Sherborne. Sir Walter they said, had not been well, had been taking the waters at Bath. He’d been active throughout the year, in Parliament, making speeches, sitting on committees, putting fresh projects before the Privy Council for setting up another colony in Virginia; but he was still not permitted to appear at Court, to see the Queen or to take up his old position as Captain of the Guard.
There was a story too that Sir John Borrough had been active again, landing on the island of Margarita, and that the Spanish governor had been killed in battle
The boom of the explosion was muffled by the rocks and the situation of the house, but there could be no doubt of its nature. In a minute my father was on his feet shouting orders, and the great hall was in confusion, men rushing off to gain their weapons, women calling to each other, children crying, dogs barking.
For the first time then I missed Belemus is companion. I knew what he would have d`SOeiipped out quietly to see what was toward, no doubt with me as his companion. I proceeded to do just that, but perhaps because of being on my own I ran into disaster.
After the first haste and confusion things quieted down quickly. Carminow was already at the castle, but Foster was in the hall, and he went off at once with four of the senior retainers bearing calivers and pistols. Since the explosion could mean several things, an attack on the almost unfortified house being as likely as an attack on the fortified castle, my father wisely did not order more of his men out of Arwenack but instead posted watchers in the two towers. The women and children he said should stay in the hall, and those not already there should assemble there, with Jael Job and his four remaining best men in charge. My father then picked out Penruddock and Carpenter and two other servants who normally never bore arms, and furnished them with pikes. A similar number of men he gave to Henry Knyvett, and told the two parties to move off in the direction from which the explosion had come.
This was as far as organisation had gone before I slipped from the hall. I raced up to my bedroom to get a sheath knife and was down again and out well ahead of the search parties.
There was a moon somewhere making opalescence of the fog. The first thing when clear of the house was the smell of gunpowder. As soon as the explosion occurred I had thought of Harold Tregwin’s story, but now it occurred to me that it might be that someone had accidentally discharged one of the great culverin in the castle or still more likely have dropped a spark into a keg of powder.
I ran quickly through the trees and bushes towards the head; the fog seemed more like smoke drifting from a fire, but at the edge of the rocks below the castle it was as if I had come past the smoke-laden area, for the fog blew chill and clean.
I looked up towards the castle. The two lights were what one would expect on any night. The sea was blanketed and impenetrable. This was much where I had come with Sue that day twelve months ago only we had climbed farther down.
There was another explosion directly under the castle wall where it ran back towards Arwenack. I was too late to see the flash, but as the sky flickered I turned and the noise struck me. Figures moved between me and the darkness where the light had been.
Someone fired a musket, but this quickly died and there was silence. A man began to shout. The sound of oars.
I was still some 20 feet above the water but turned to climb up again because the sound was so close; they must have been coming in right beneath me. I took a sharp step up, and two figures on the rock above converged in the mist. I grabbed at my knife, but a man caught my arm and twisted it round. Something glinted like a shield or a breastplate, and then my head seemed to split open with a blow that reached down to my chin.
I woke in a ship’s hold, seasick and with a vile headache. A rope ladder was swinging like a pendulum and bilge water was slapping backwards and forwards with the rolling of the ship.
After a while a man came down and left me a bowl of bread and milk, but I was too sick to eat it, and the rats had it instead. I must eventually have slept, for I woke to find a dark foreign man bending over me and fingering the bump on my head. He nodded at me but said nothing and climbed the rope ladder and disappeared.
I was wondering whether to make the effort to try the ladder myself when the hatchway opened and another man came down. He was big and fair-haired with a lean fox face. He was Captain Richard Burley of Neptune, who had feasted at our house in company with Captain Elliot and Mr Love on my fourteenth birthday.
BOOK FIVE
CHAPTER ONE
It was the 25th of February, 1594. The small and shabby cavalcade was dwarfed by the mountains that raised their shattered tips into an ultramarine sky. Leading the party on foot was a tall peasant called Bartolomeo. He took long steady strides, using his crooked stick as if to divine the way. On his almost shaven head he wore a wide brimmed black hat with a broad strap under the chin, and his great black cloak was wrapped tight around him against the wind.
I wished I had such a cloak for protection. The wind had blown for four days. Although the snow was ankle deep where we walked, and clutched crisply at every step with a fine powdery film misting up to our knees, most of the peaks far above us were bare. They had-been blown bare.
There were two carts in our procession, carts drawn by mules whose high wooden collars were painted with flowers, and whose shabby harness, held together with hemp and cord, was decorated with tiny bells and rosettes of vivid coloured wool. But I did not ride in them. The second cart carried produce necessary for our survival from day to day. The first carried Captain Richard Burley and Captain Juan Rodrigo Alazar, a Portuguese gentleman I had met while still at sea.
It was the 25th February, and my sixteenth birthday.
We were near Madrid.