“Well, boy?”
I tried to speak but some spittle of fright formed on my tongue and I could only swallow and stare.
“What d’you want?” she said again.
“I’m … I came to see Mistress Foot-Footmarker.”
“You’re as near her as you’ll ever be.”
I shifted from one foot to the other. A black dog was lying beside a wicker basket and a jackdaw was perched on a beam.
“What’s your name, lad?” I told her. She got slowly to her feet, brushed the dust off her skirt, picked at a stain on it with her long forefinger. “I thought I’d seen you before. I thought so. You’re from Arwenack. Of course. You’re for Arwenack. I thought so.”
It was like being accused of something. “Yes.”
“Ah … And what can I do for a Kilfigrew?”
I watched the rabbit pick up a piece of lettuce and put it in his mouth. You could hear the crunching and could see his fat little cheeks swell up and down.
“… Is he a pet rabbit?”
“Not a pet, lad, because he’s free. He comes here when he is so minded.”
I stood half in and half out of the door.
She said: “Does your father know you’ve come?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You mean you’ve come to see me all on your own? Who suggested it?”
“I just thought I’d walk this way.”
She blew out a breath and with her foot stirred a big grey cat which was asleep in the half shade. “Well, it’s a surprise to be so visited. It’s very strange. If there was to be any call from a Kilfigrew I’d have held a penny it had been your father with his armed band of ruffians to set the place afire over my head.”
“Oh, no, he’d never do that.”
“Would he not! ” She scratched her bare leg above the knee where there was a tear in her skirt. “I’m between one and the other here, lad, as you should know. On the north side IS Penryn and on the south side Arwenack, both wishing me ill, but each waitin’ and watchin’ for the other to stir first.” She smiled, showing strong white teeth in her long brown face. “Don’t you believe me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you’ve come for then.”
I said: “I want to know who my mother was.”
The big black dog suddenly barked again and this disturbed the jackdaw, who fluttered his wings and edged along the beam staring at me with a beady eye.
“Hush, Moses!” the woman said, turning suddenly on the dog, and the dog got to its feet and slunk away into the darkness with its tail curving between its legs. “Noisy animals I can’t abide ~ ” she said. “Silence is where you learn things, not in noise.”
She poured herself some milk and drank it, extended the mug to me. I shook my head.
“How old are you, Maugan Killigrew?”
“Fourteen.”
“And base born? Fourteen. That’s 1578, isn’t it. Why do you suppose I can answer your question?”
“I thought you might find out.”
“Ah-hah, and when I find out you’ll run back to Arwenack saying Katherine Footmarker is a worser witch than ever you suspected and that she has a black dog that sings lewd hymns and five cats dressed in cassocks and surplices I”
“No, no, I shall not! Really I shall not.”
“So you say.” She put the mug down and came slowly forward into the light again. “1578 is a long time since. John Killigrew has been rovin’ over the countryside for long enough. How can you expect anyone to remember except maybe your mother? and perhaps even she’s forgot.”
“She is dead! My father told me.”
“Ah … well, then. So he remembers. And he won’t tell you? Maugan Killigrew, born in 1578. Well, well.”
The rabbit had stopped eating and was watching her.
“What’ll you give me to find out?”
“I’ve two shillings here.”
“I saw your father ride out this morning,” she said, “with his band of servants. What mischief is he up to now?’)
“He is not ‘up to mischief’. He rides out to hunt and hawk, that’s all.”
“That’s what you believe, eh? Truly? Let me look at you.” She put a hand under my chin, but I shrank away. “I believe you’re as innocent as you look … Give me a shilling.”
I gave her one of the coins.
“This is the half,” she said between her teeth as she bit at the silver. “Come again in three or four weeks. Time of the next full moon, maybe.”
“But I may not be able to get here againl I thought you would I thought you could …”
I looked across the harbour. Two small cogs were luffing out of Penryn Creek, and another vessel had dropped anchor off Trefusis Point. She looked like one of the bigger fishing boats from Fowey or Looe.
The woman said: “If you think I am of the dark then you must come in the dark.”
The rabbit hopped off his stool and moved out of the hut.
“Here, let me look at your hand.” Before I could put them behind my back she had caught one and had turned it palm upward. “How hot you are. A touch of ague, maybe? … Well, leastwise you waste nothing needless on soap and water. Here, spit on them boy not to clean them, but the way the spittle dries tells me as much as the lines themselves.”
I did what she said. She was too close to me with her long black hair drooping over my hands. She smelt of damp hay.
She said: “You’re a Killigrew whether you like it or not. There’s the eagle on you stamped, see? No escape. You’ve an interesting hand, boy. There’s blood on it. There’s blood on both.”
I tried to wriggle my hands free.
“Don’t go yet. It’s different blood and all. Can you not see it? Here, here, by the two fingers and thumb of your left hand and a streak across the palm of the right.”
“What does it mean?”
“Ah, that I can’t ten you. Time will tell you. You’re going to travel, lad. I see you back and forth to Arwenack an your life in it but never of it. There’s wars and women, though only one or two that mark deep. But always Cornwall and Arwenack, whether you like it or not, in your vitals. You’ll die here, I’m thinkin’, here or hereabouts but not at Arwenack. You see, that’s the last time it shows; your life line goes on after that.”
I took my hands away as soon as she gave a sign of releasing them. She laughed.
“I think you’ll make a comely man, Maugan. The women win like you. Nor will the men despise you. It takes courage to seek out such a woman as I’m whispered to be.”
I tried surreptitiously to wipe my hands down the back of my jerkin. “When must I come again?”
“Today the moon is two days after the full. Come in a month or thereabouts; I may have somethin’ for you then, though it’s no promise.”
“I’ll try to get away.”
“You’ll get away. Most of the things you want to do you’ll do. I can see it in your face.”
The gate that was the main entrance through the stockade to our land was on high ground which dominated the approaches to the house from the south. During daylight there was one or another manservant on duty there to see no unwanted person was admitted beggars, tinkers, pedlars, they an got short shrift; as indeed did other more important personages if my father had reasons for not seeing them. At night the three boar hounds, Charon and Scylla and Charybdis roamed at large.
But today I knew that by now a servant caned Penrudduck would be at the gate and that he would let me in without telling on me, so I was making straight up the uphill path when I heard a horse whinny close behind. I ducked behind a gorse bush just as my father and Uncle Simon came over the brow of the hill.
With them were eight of our servants and Belemus and Rosewarne our steward. Their horses were sweating, and all looked as if they had ridden hard. But they could not have been hawking for none of the falconers was there, no hooded hawks on wrist, no game tied lifeless over saddles. It was true that four spaniels followed tongues lolling sideways, but these were my father’s favourite dogs that went with him everywhere.