Spring came, and we children worked reluctantly through the long bright mornings longing for the afternoon hours of freedom and adventure. Usually we stayed within the palisades, but sometimes we ventured abroad in the keeping of a groom called Rose who not seldom risked a thrashing for allowing us to wander farther than we should. We had a tiny boat with a single sail and a pair of oars; in it we sometimes sailed wed up the river.
Both river banks, except for enclaves where houses or villages stood, were covered with thick dark woods, cut through here and there with miry tracks. Squirrels, badgers, foxes and hares abounded, and sometimes underfoot the viper would lift his head. Venturing into this wild country was explicitly forbidden us by Parson Merther, but sometimes we penetrated a few hundred yards. Many strange stories were told of these woods, that they were old, old as the birth of the world, and that they had an influence on all people born or living in them. Strange sects flourished there; witches lived in the far reaches of some of the narrower creeks. These smaller creeks filled up with glimmering oily water at high tide but twice daily sank away to silent yellow mud on which the only sound was the cry and flutter of birds. Many an unsuspecting child, we were told, had strayed up them never to return. Some of the bigger birds were like children, lost children crying, and who was to say they were not?
In the summer we proved the age and magic of the woods by diving and swimming under the water just at the edge of our enclosed land by the entrance to Penryn Creek. There you could see the trees that had grown there before ever the river was. Clusters of tree stumps still existed three fathoms under water, hazel and oak and beech and fir, and at low tide you could see the flag iris and the ferns.
On the promontory of land dividing Penryn Creek from the Fal River proper lived the Trefusis family, of Trefusis, but we seldom visited or spoke. I did not then know any reason why and as a matter of course took my father’s part, but the two families had quarrelled over the generations, and it was well known John Trefusis did not at all approve of Killigrew highhandedness. My father used to say that with the mouth of the Fal held between the pincers of Pendennis and St Mawes Castles, Trefusis Point felt the nip every time the pincers closed.
Farther up the Fal on the left bank, near the ferry across the river, was Tolverne in which lived cousins of ours, a branch of the Arundell family. Jonathan, the elder boy, was in his twenties, but Thomas and Elizabeth were of our age. Sir Anthony Arundell of Tolverne, the father, had become an eccentric of late, living a recluse’s life, often not rising from his bed until five in the afternoon, sometimes not retiring until daybreak. My father said the woods had got him.
One day in early May we children were invited to spend the day there, so we sailed up the river in the company of Rose and another servant. Tolverne was a much smaller house than ours, but it was convenient of scope and less sprawling and would have been pleasant had it not been so dark and close. In front of the main windows was a shallow lawn, but surrounding that were the trees, crowding close, with a path cut through them to the river. Many of the trees near the house were conifers and even in the winter kept the light away. To me, brought up on the airy promontory of Arwenack, the house was always secretive and strange.
We found there today besides the three young Arundells, Gertrude and Hoblyn Carew, the children of Richard Carew of Antony near Plymouth, Gertrude being in her middle teens and Hoblyn two years younger; and also Sue Farnaby from Treworgan near Truro, a slim girl of about fourteen with a piquant tilted face and black hair; and Jack Arundell of Trerice, who at 15 had been head of the ArundeU Trerices ever since his father died when he was an infant.
Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne, though 25, seemed to find as much pleasure in the afternoon as any of us, especially when it put him in the company of Gertrude Carew. Soon we began a game called ‘Who’s From Home?’ which ranged over the widest area of the garden and grounds, and to my slight alarm I found myself paired with Sue Farnaby. I had never been alone with a girl of my own age in quite this way before for the essence of the game was that it should be stealthy and secretive, and that led to whispering close to ears and giggling and an air of conspiracy which put you on a familiar footing right off.
Sue had the advantage of having played this game at Tolverne before, so she knew all the best hiding places and all the paths through the woods. Soon we had lost the others and were on a narrow path by the river from which we could see our own little boat with Rose sitting fishing from it, a rowboat crossing at the ferry and a troy of thirty or forty tons struggling down the river against the breeze.
“It’s best to sit here for a while,” she said. “The others will seek each other by the house. After we have given them time to scatter we can creep back and be first home.”
She settled on an outcrop of rock and smoothed the thin scarf tied over her ears. “My father is a farmer and merchant. We do not own Treworgan, we rent it from your father. My mother knew your mother in Devon.”
“My mother?” I said, and then realised she meant Mrs Killigrew.
“Yes. They grew up near each other.”
“That is my stepmother. My own mother is dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry … My mother almost died when I was born; that’s why I’m an only child.”
“Are you lonely at home?”
The turned and gave me a wide glinting beautiful smile. “No … I have so many friends.”
The smile made her a new one for life. She shaded her eyes with her hand. “Do you know Sir Anthony Arundell? Isn’t that him coming across the ferry?”
There were two men in the boat. “The front one in the crimson cloak? Yes, you cannot mistake his white hair.”
Sue Farnaby said: “I have been friendly with Elizabeth Arundell for years. I come here often, and sometimes she comes to us, though our house is humble to hers. Why were you called Maugan? Is it Welsh?”
I laughed. “I don’t think so. Not this way of spelling it. There was a St Maugan, wasn’t there, who founded a church near Padstow? I have never thought about it. Why were you called Susan?”
“Susanne,” she said, “after my grandmother.”
I laughed again. There was nothing in the conversation, but at the time it seemed light and witty and suddenly joyous. we chatted on until she got up and gave me a hand. “We should be going: they’ll have tired of waiting by now.”
Giggling together, we began to creep back by another path towards the house. I wished I could wander through these woods all afternoon linked to this slim, pale, black-haired creature who led me on by one hand, while the other gathered her skirts together at the front so that they should not be caught by brambles. When she laughed her teeth gleamed like sudden sunshine; her skin was strangely fine; her eyes had twenty expressions from the darkest gravity to gray-green laughter. For me at that moment she was all mystery and enchantment: she was the first woman.
We found ourselves within sight of the house; and there ahead of us crouching behind a bush was Belemus with little Odelia Killigrew who had drawn him as her partner. I had no wish to speak to them, but Sue Farnaby said we must, so in three minutes we had ‘captured’ them and were concerting together how we might get back to our winning point on the other side of the house without being seen.
Sue said-we could go through the house: there was an arched door ahead of us in a stone wall and beyond it steps to another narrower door which was open. We found ourselves in a dark room which had a strange look about it, there being ornaments and small pictures and a smell of burnt herbs. Before we could go on Sir Anthony came in followed by the man who had been with him in the rowing boat.