"I can guess why that is," laughed Diana.
"Oh, don't be idiotic. He may be like that, but Dick certainly isn't. Very much the reverse."
"Maybe that's his attraction for the Professor," said Diana. I replaced the receiver very gently. The trouble was, with women, they had one-track minds, and to their narrow view everything male, be it man, dog, fish or slug, pursued but a single course, and that the dreary road to copulation. I sometimes wondered if they ever thought of anything else.
Vita and her friend Diana nattered on for at least another fifteen minutes, and when she came downstairs, fortified by feminine advice, she made no reference to my scene in the basement, but, humming gaily and wearing an apron of bizarre design — it looked as if it had apples and serpents all over it — set about cooking us steaks for supper heaped about with parsley butter.
"Early bed for all," she announced as the boys, heavy-eyed and silent, yawned their way through the meal — the seven-hour journey in the car and the jaunt in the harbour was catching up with them. After supper she installed herself on the sofa in the library, and set about mending the rents in my trousers torn in the valley. I sat down at Magnus's desk murmuring something about unpaid bills, but in reality looking once agaln through the Lay Subsidy Roll for Tywardreath Parish for 1327. Julian Polpey was there, Henry Trefrengy, Geoffrey Lampetho. The names had meant nothing when I first read through the list, but they could have registered unconsciously in my mind. The figures might still be phantom figures that I had followed to the valley, passing the farms that still bore their names today.
I noticed an unopened letter on my desk. It was the one the postman had given me that morning; in my flurry at the family's arrival I had laid it down. It was just a scrap, typewritten, from the research student in London.
'Professor Lane thought you might like this note on Sir John Carminowe,' it read. 'He was the second son of Sir Roger Carminowe of Carminowe. Enrolled in the military 1323. Became a knight 1324. Summoned to attend Great Council at Westminster. Appointed Keeper of Tremerton and Restormel castles April 27th, 1331, and on October 12th of the same year keeper of the King's forests, parks, woods and warrens, etc., and of the King's game in the county of Cornwall, so that he had to answer yearly for the profit of the pannage and herbage within the said forests, parks and woods, by the hand of the steward there, and deputy keepers under him.'
The student had written in brackets, 'Copied from Calendar of Fine Rolls 5th year Edward III.' He had added a further note beneath, 'October 24th. Patent Rolls, for same year (1331), mentions a licence for Joanna, late wife of Henry de Champernoune, tenant-in-chief to marry whomsoever she will of the King's allegiance. Pay fine of 10 marks.'
So… Sir John had got what he wanted and Otto Bodrugan had lost, while Joanna, in anticipation of Sir John's wife dying, had a marriage licence handy in some bottom drawer. I filed the paper with the Lay Subsidy Roll, and getting up from the desk went to the bookshelves, where I rembered seeing the numerous volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, legacy of Commander Lane. I pulled out Volume 8, and turned to Edward III. Vita stretched herself on the sofa, yawning, her repeated sighs following one another in swift succession. "Well, I don't know about you", she said, "but I'm off to bed."
"I'll be up in a moment," I told her.
"Still hard at work for your Professor?" she asked. "Take that volume to the light, you'll ruin your eyes."
I did not answer.
Edward III (1312–1377), king of England, eldest son of Edward II and Isabella of France, was born at Windsor on the 13th of November 1312… On the 13th of January 1327 parliament recognised him as king, and he was crowned on the 29th of the same month. For the next four years Isabella and her paramour Mortimer governed in his name, though nominally his guardian was Henry, Earl of Lancaster. In the summer of 1327 he took part in an abortive campaign against the Scots, and was married to Philippa at York on the 24th of January 1328. On the 5th of June 1330 his eldest child, Edward the Black Prince, was born.
Nothing there about a rebellion. But here was the clue.
Soon after, Edward made a successful effort to throw off his degrading dependence on his mother and Mortimer. In October 1330 he entered Nottingham Castle by night, through a subterranean passage, and took Mortimer prisoner. On the 29th of November the execution of the favourite at Tyburn completed the young king's emancipation. Edward discreetly drew a veil over his mother's relations with Mortimer, and treated her with every respect. There is no truth in the stories that henceforth he kept her in honourable confinement, but her political influence was at an end.
Bodrugan's too, what he possessed in Cornwall. Sir John, only a year later appointed Keeper of Tremerton and Restormel castles, a good King's man, was in command, with Roger, playing it safe, imposing silence on his valley friends, the October night forgotten. I wondered what had happened after that meeting at Polpey's farm when Isolda risked so much to warn her lover; whether Bodrugan, brooding on what might-have-been, returned to his estates and thought about his love, and whether she, when her husband Oliver was absent, met him perhaps in secret. I had been standing beside them both less than twenty-four hours ago. Six centuries ago…
I put the volume back on the shelf, switched off the lights and went upstairs. Vita was already in bed, the curtains pulled back so that when she sat up she could look through the wide windows to the sea.
"This room is heaven," she said. "Imagine what it will be like with a full moon. Darling, I'm going to love it here, I promise you, and it's so wonderful to be together again."
I stood for a moment at the window, staring out across the bay. Roger, from his sleeping-quarters above the original kitchen, had the same dark expanse of sea and sky for company, and as I turned away, towards the bed, I remembered Magnus's mocking remark on the telephone the day before, "I was only about to suggest, dear boy, that moving between two worlds can act as a stimulant." It was not true — in fact, the contrary.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE NEXT DAY being Sunday, Vita announced her intention over breakfast of taking the boys to church. She did this sort of thing from time to time during the holidays. Two or three weeks would go by with never a mention of devotional duty, and then suddenly, without giving any reason, and generally when they were otherwise happily employed, she would burst into their room saying, "Come on, now, I'll give you just five minutes to get ready."
"Ready? What for?" they would query, looking up from fitting together a model aeroplane or something momentarily engrossing their attention.
"Church, of course," she would answer, sweeping from the room again, deaf to their wails of protestation. It was always a let-out for me. Pleading my Catholic upbringing, I would lie late in bed, reading the Sunday papers. Today, despite sunshine flooding our room as we awoke, and the beaming smile of Mrs. Collins as she bore in our tray of toast and coffee, Vita looked preoccupied, and said she had had a restless night. I at once felt guilty, having slept like a log myself, and I thought how this thing of how well or how badly one had slept was really the great test of marital relationship; if one partner came off poorly during the night hours the other was immediately to blame, and the following day would come apart in consequence.
This particular Sunday was to be no exception to the rule, and when the boys came into the bedroom to say good morning dressed in jeans and tee-shirts, she immediately exploded.
"Off with those things at once and into your flannel suits! she said. Have you forgotten it's Sunday? We're going to church."