Old Sebastian could restrain himself no longer and came up the hill his great stick swinging and murder in his eye. Otho at once followed. We should have had our skulls laid open before ever we could get near them, so we turned and went up the hill.
And there stopped. The eight bell-ringers had come out of the church and while we were exchanging insults with the Kendalls had surrounded us. Except for two who carried sticks they were not armed, but four or five were grabbing up stones.
“Hold ‘em, boysl” shouted Otho. “We’ll give ‘em a rare cooling this time!”
A stone struck me on the shoulder. Behind us the two old men would be on us within a count of five. Together we rushed uphill towards the two men who chiefly barred the way home. Another stone struck me on the back of the head, and a great shower sprayed over Belemus. Faced by us both charging them with drawn knives the two men backed away. One swung at Belemus’s shin with a stick as we went past. He stumbled but I grabbed his arm and we were through.
But though we ran we did not outdistance thern. It was close on two miles to the palisades, and each time when we thought we were clear they would catch us again with another shower of stones.
When we got to the gate of Arwenack and the shouts and yells of our pursuers had at last died away, I was bruised in a dozen places and bleeding at the back of the neck. As Belemus leaned against the gate gulping for breath he bared his teeth and said:
“They think to drive us away, the rogues.”
“And so they have.”
“But not for long, dear Maugan, not for long.”
“Well,” I said, “I do not fancy your love affair will prosper, but let me know what you have in mind.”
That night we went back with a halfdozen armed servants. We walked along the little cobbled main street. Cottagers at their doors watched us resentfully, and mothers called their children in, but no one blocked the way. We went into Cox’s tavern and stayed drinking for an hour. Then Belemus went out and hammered on the door of the Kendalls’ house. The windows were shuttered and no one came. Belemus thought to break down the door but I counselled that this would not endear him to Sibylla, however she might be suffering at the hands of her parents. So we came away.
Thus the affair simmered for two or three weeks. Then we began to revisit the tavern, though not without rapiers in our belts. Sometimes Belemus would get a word with the girl, but she was close guarded. Then came another day when, leaving as darkness fell, we were stoned again.
Belemus said: “These rats need a lesson.”
We went back that night and broke open the door of the church. I climbed up in the belfry and cut the four bell ropes so that but one strand of each remained. Some of the ringers would likely fall on their scuts at the next practice.
We splashed lime-wash on the walls, carried out the pews and chairs and dropped them in the mud of the river. We rounded up a flock of sheep, drove them into the church and shut the door on them. Then we dug a pit outside the door and went home.
A scandal there was, but none could bring the fault home to a Killigrew. We continued to go into Penryn twice a week. Sometimes Belemus would get a word with Sibylla but most often not. Then one day we met her by chance on St Thomas’s Bridge and it all fell into place. He came home exultant but at first would not satisfy my curiosity. Two days later he took a private chamber at Cox’s tavern and spent the night there. Then I knew’it’ had happened but not how. The next time we went together he showed me the window of the chamber he had hired. It looked directly into Sibylla’s window. There was a high wall between the two buildings, but if you were already on a level with it it could be used as a stepping stone between.
So for three weeks he took the room at Cox’s Tavern, selling two of his rings to pay for it. His absences did not go unremarked at Arwenack, but he was eighteen and thought able to look out for himself.
Then one day he was not back to help with the reaping, and since it was the first fine day of the week my father was angry. I went up to my chamber about noon and found Belemus lying on the bed.
He said: “Ah, well, Maugan, I had a little trouble,” and moved. The bed was soaked with blood.
On his way home he had been set on by two men in the wood above the town. He had a knife wound in his ribs and a purple cut on his head. He did not know either man had barely seen them but he had been left, perhaps for dead, and had not come round until the sun was high. Then he had crawled down towards Three Farthings House, and Paul Gwyther had brought him home in his cart.
He was weak from loss of blood and the knife had gone deep, but he had not bled from his mouth, and I thought he was not wounded to death.
There was a rough and ready treatment followed at Arwenack for injuries of all sorts, but I thought of what Katherine Footmarker had told me and used first a strong solution of salt and water, at which he complained greatly; then I put on a plaster and hoped for the best.
He said, would I keep it quiet from my father, so I went down to dinner and told a story that Belemus was staying the day with the Arundells; but I did not think the deception would work long, for too many servants were in the secret. Belemus spent the night in my chamber, while I slept on the floor and John squeezed in next door. Belemus had a fever, but all his cursings and ravings were of a quite logical turn, on the theme that Sibylla would be expecting him and he would not be there.
The following day he was hardly able to move, but he crawled down to dinner somehow and told how he had fallen from a horse. It was clear that any prospect of visiting Sibylla was remote for at least a week. I said, well, I would go and tell her.
He said: “Go after dark. And take Long Peter. He is the roughest man I know when it comes to an ambush or a tavern brawl.”
“Are you in love with Sibylla, Belemus?”
He stared. “Of course. I worship the ground she steps on. She is like Thisbe walking in a woodland glade! She is so beautiful I lose my breath every time I look at her “
“Yes, yes, I understand. And does she love you?”
“Mother of God, how could you doubt it? D’you think she’s a whore? D’you think she would have given herself to me otherwise “
“And shall you wed her?”
He tried to catch his moustache with his bottom teeth. “I think it is possible, Maugan. I think it is likely. But with my father in prison a deal may depend on my marriage. I’m not as free as you. But I would wish to; I would certainly wish to.”
“She will have little money and no position. It is something to think of.”
“Oh … That is in the future we are both young. I love her, and she loves me, that’s all there’s to it now. If things go wrong betwixt us I shall wed her, you can be assured of that. You were always one to look on the black side.”
I patted him gently on his unsore shoulder and said: “It’s all very plain now. I will give her your message and your love.”
The nights were drawing in, and when supper was over it was dark. I did not ask Long Peter to go with me; I thought he might be in the way.
I walked to Penryn and Cox’s Tavern. Only four men were in the taproom, and they were all fishermen, of a harmless sort, not toadies or bullies. I drank a pint of small beer. Cox had a heady ale known as ‘lift leg’, but the business tonight demanded clear thinking. After an hour I asked for the chamber which my cousin Belemus had reserved. With some side glances I was shown up into a tiny room, so low-beamed that you could not stand upright. The window was already shuttered, and the pot boy who showed me up set down the candle on the chest by the door and quickly left.
I shot the rude bolt on the door, unlatched belt and sword and put it on the pallet, then beside it I set my leather jerkin. The situation was as Belemus had described it: a shuttered window opposite, with a wall between which came no higher than the sill.