Sue said: “I beg your pardon, sir; we were playing a game and had lost our way.”
Sir Anthony had a flat plump face which my father said had once been handsome. The flesh was no longer healthy; it was as if some subtle corrosion of stress had touched it. He waved a dismissive hand, but the man with him said:
“These are your children, sir?”
He was a stout man, his stoutness being in all ways different from Sir Anthony’s, as a taut strong rope is different from a frayed slack one.
“No … Friends of my children. This is Susanna Farnaby of Treworgan. This is Maugan and Odelia Killigrew, and Belemus Roscarrock, who also lives at Arwenack.”
“Roscarrock,” said the man. “That is a famous Catholic name.”
“My father is a Catholic,” said Belemus.
We were about to move off when Lady Arundell came in. Sir Anthony said: “Oh, Anne, this is Mr Humphry Petersen, I don’t think you will have met him before. Though you’ll have heard our cousins speak of him.”
“You come from Chideock?” Lady Arundell said coldly.
“Not directly, my lady, though I know it. I have been abroad for some months.”
“You have news of war, then?”
“Nothing that makes good hearing. The English have suffered a heavy defeat in Brittany.”
“Ah?” said Sir Anthony. “I hadn’t heard it.”
“Well, sir, it’s serious enough to prejudice English hopes in France for a long time. We laid siege to Craon 1,000 English, some 600 Germans and some loyal French troops under the Prince of Dombe and the Prince of Condy. A large force of Spanish and League forces launched a surprise attack and cut us to pieces. The loyal French suffered much less but fled and found refuge in neighbouring towns, but we had no place of refuge, sir, and were hardly an army at all by dawn of the next day.”
Lady Arundell said: “Susanne, in the orchard under the vine bower you will find my lawn cap. Fetch it for me, will you?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“Did I hear say you were a Killigrew, boy?” Mr Petersen said to me as I was going past him.
“Yes, sir.”
“The Killigrews of Arwenack, hard by the mouth of the Pal,” said Sir Anthony Arundell. “John Killigrew has a numerous brood.”
“Yes, I know of him well. He governs Pendennis Castle. And are you the eldest boy?”
“Yes, sir, leastwise …”
“Leastwise? “
“Maugan is a pack-saddle boy,” said Sir Anthony, peering at me as if I were not there. “John is his eldest, who’s twelve or so; you’ll see him in the garden. Thomas is a year younger, and Odelia, here, a year younger still.”
Just then Jack Arundell of Trerice and Thomas Arundell came in to see what had become of us, so we went off with them and rejoined the others. We lay for a time in the grass talking and laughing and planning what we should play next.
Suddenly Odelia dropped a little stone into her lap and said: “What is recusancy? I have not heard of it before.”
“Recusancy?” said Thomas. “Who used the word?”
“It was your visitor, Thomas, I did not mean it had been spoken out here. Is it some wrong word?”
“There is nothing wrong with the word,” said Jack Arundell of Trerice brusquely. “It is what it stands for that’s dislikable. Recusancy is being a Catholic and refusing to change, refusing to come to church, refusing to be a Protestant of the English Church.”
“Are you a recusancy, Belemus?” Odelia asked.
“Recusant,” said Belemus, sucking a piece of grass. “My father is.”
“Mean to say he would fight for the Spaniards?” Hoblyn Carew asked.
“Of course,” said Belemus. “I’m a Spaniard in disguise. Did you not know?”
Sarcasm was too much for some of the younger ones and they wriggled uncomfortably.
“They say there are spies and traitors everywhere,” said Hoblyn. “They say that if the Spaniards landed there would be traitors in every town. And they say another Armada is coming.”
You could hear the east wind stirring the top of the trees. Odelia picked up two stones and threw them into the air, trying to pick up the one in her lap before catching the two as they came down.
“And what,” she said, “is a pack-saddle boy?”
Two of the older ones laughed, and I thought Sue Farnaby was one of them. Belemus said “When you are born the midwife puts you on a horse, and if you take a toss you are known as ‘t
Thomas interrupted: “Being a pack-saddle boy means you are a bastard.”
Thomas was the second of the Tolverne children; nine or ten years younger than his brother, but still older and bigger than 1. The other two were gentle and rather frail and without guile, but he was a thruster, with tight curled hair, a white bland face like his father’s but without the sensitivity, a pampered body.
I said: “You are quite a know-all, aren’t you?”
“Well, it’s the truth. It may taste poor, but then the truth often does. It’s a pill that has to be swallowed.”
“Other things too may have to be swallowed. Like this mud, for instance.”
“It means,” he said, “that your mother like as not was a light woman and that, for certain, you have no name. You bear the name of Killigrew for a kindness only. I doubt if you was ever baptised.”
He got up as I went for him, but I had the strength of anger. I put him down twice and broke two of his front teeth. Odelia and Elizabeth were screaming and soon the elders rushed out and there was much to do, with no one taking my side except Sue Farnaby and Jack Arundell of Trerice, and the elders were too angry to listen to either of them.
The party did not last long after that. Making the most of a need to catch the falling tide, we left in a subdued silence. I thought I would never be invited there again and probably would never see Susanna Farnaby again or be permitted to roam through the woods with her, with the sun shining and the trees budding and the river birds crying and a light breeze rustling the grasses. I felt as if I had destroyed some part of my youth.
In spite of the ebbing tide the head breeze was so fresh as we came out into Carrick Road that Rose and the other servant had to lower the sail and take to the oars. I only spoke once and that was to Belemus as we neared our landing jetty.
“I don’t understand it. Would you not have fought him if he had said as much to you? Then why did he say it? What had I done to offend him?”
Belemus smiled his cavernous old-man’s smile.
“Witless, don’t you know you had spent all the afternoon enamouring with the little girl he most fancies for himself?”
Rose was the bearer of an angry note written by Lady Arundell to my father complaining that I had attacked her son as if I were out of Bedlam and had done his looks permanent harm and perhaps his very health; she trusted I should be suitably dealt with.
I was. My father was out, but my grandmother ordered me to be well thrashed, not by Parson Merther, who had no muscle, but by Carminow the gunner, who knew how to draw blood. And then I was confined to my room for three days on bread and water.
The pain and the hunger were things quite light beside the sense of humiliation. Something budding for the first time in my heart had been burned away. I went over the scenes of the afternoon a hundred times, and all the pleasure of the first hours was poisoned by the disgrace of the last.
On the second day of the confinement came a new and unexpected frustration: we woke that morning, which was a Thursday, to find ten ships of war anchored in the roads.
The fleet was under the personal command of Walter Ralegh, with Sir John Burrough as second-in-command, and was being sent out to attack the Isthmus of Panama and to try to capture the treasure ships of the Plate. That night my father was to banquet Ralegh and Burrough and a picked company of officers and gentlemen. They were sailing on the morrow.