“Twas took off last week, Master Maugan.”
“But why?”
He rubbed his thumb through his beard. “Mr Killigrew ordered it. Mrs Farnaby was not for moving; ye see, she says Mr Farnaby is too ill to be moved. Mr Killigrew had been over once afore but the rent was not paid, so we was ordered to take all the doors off, and Mr Killigrew puts an hour-glass on a pole and says if they’re not out by the time the sand is run we’re to go in and put ‘em out.”
There were two white doves cooing in a cote.
“Have our servants been left here since you came last?”
“Aye. The house and furniture has been seized in non-payment and will all be sold. If we’d have left it unguarded news would have got around, and other debtors would’ve stepped in and claimed a share.”
I walked slowly into the house. My father was in what must have been the big parlour. With him was a clerkly man with a book.
“Tis all down, Mr Killigrew,” he was saying, giving a little bow now and then as he spoke. “One Turkey carpet, œ3, Two window cushions, lOs., Two looking glasses, œ1 3s 4d., Nine pieces of hangings, which rightly belong in the diningchamber, œ3 lOs., Twenty-nine pewter dishes, twelve saucers and a candlestick, œ2 Ids. ad. Tis all down in the greatest detail.”
My father grunted. “Nevertheless kindly walk with me through the house. I want to have a fair idea of the total value.”
“The total value, Mr Killigrew, the total value …” They disappeared through the farther door, the little clerk trotting behind Mr Killigrew like an eager puppy.
I went back into the hall. Behind the door was a cloak and a hat with a feather. Had they not even been allowed time to take their personal things? I thought of slender, pretty Sue as I had seen her last laughing among the trees at Tolverne.
I went upstairs and opened one or two of the doors. In the second room there was a faint perfume: I think it is sandalwood, for to this day if that scent comes to my nostrils I am back in that empty house walking hesitantly into Sue’s chamber.
I never for a moment doubted that it was hers. The long narrow bed with the taffeta curtains, the floor covering of a once bright yellow, now much faded and worn. The canvas sheets were still on the bed. On a table beside the window was a sugar box, a cup of mother of pearl, a candle snuffer. By the table was a pair of worn slippers of blue velvet. A looking glass lay face downwards on a chair, as if dropped in haste.
I picked up the slippers and thrust them inside my jerkin and ran out of the house.
We were expected at Trerice, and Jack Arundell came out to meet us, with his mother, younger brother and sisters not far behind. I liked Jack as much as any boy I knew, and little realised what the years would bring. He was staunch, opinionated, frank, and had a great belly-laugh which his new-found deep voice made the more startling. His father had died when he was four and he had been under the wardship of Sir Richard Grenville until Sir Richard was killed.
Trerice was a new house, enlarged and rebuilt by Jack’s father, and was handsome and ornately gabled though not so large as ours. Mrs Arundell was good looking and, being a second wife, much younger than her late husband; and I was a little startled to see my father suddenly begin paying court to her. No doubt it was all done expertly and with breeding, but to me, being so young, it seemed maladroit and was greatly embarrassing. He invited them to spend Christmas with us, and Mrs Arundell, blushing, thanked him and said she
would try to make the necessary arrangements. “Do not try, Gertrude, just make ‘em and come.” “Well, John, I have four stepdaughters to consider, two of them yet unmarried, aside from my own family.” “Bring them all. We shall be very jolly this Christmas, so the more the merrier.”
I slept in the same bed with Jack, in a square dark room black panelled to the ceiling, and we talked long after the lights were snuffed. Jack said he knew where the Farnabys would be, her sister’s husband was called Maris and owned a farm on the high ground behind the river.
Jack had just returned from Exeter College, Oxford, and next year after he had matriculated was to read law at Lincoln’s Inn. He told me of his life at Oxford, the Ids. 8d. a year he paid for his chamber, of dicing at the inns, of long talking late into the night and arguing all the problems of the universe with like minds, of disguising himself in a workman’s smock to go and see the plays in St Mary’s Church, of the cold after Cornwall and the load of wood he had ordered for when he returned on the 8th of January, of the logic he read, of the laws against beards and long hair, of the lectures on rhetoric and theology.
After a while he fell silent, and then said: “What do you think of the Arundells of Tolverne, Maugan?”
“I have not been since my the dispute I had with Thomas. Why? “
“I esteem Jonathan myself. But like you I am not very inclinable to Thomas who is something of a cot-queen and will rule them all before long. Did you know Jonathan is to wed Gertrude Carew next month?”
“No. She’s very young.”
“It will be a good match. Even his father favours it.”
“Why ‘even his father’?”
“Because Sir Anthony, I believe, is getting addled in his age and does not know his own mind two days together. Have you any hankering after the old faith, Maugan?”
“The old faith?” I said, astonished. “No. I am a Protestant, as we all are.”
“As we all should be. Catholic is another way of spelling Traitor these days. How many of them are in the pay of Spain no one knows. But we Arundells are a mixed bag. Our cousins _,,
“Oh, the Arundells of Lanherne, I know.”
“My grandfather happily believed otherwise, and we are as staunchly Protestant as the Killigrews. So are the Tolverne Arundells, one would say.”
“Have you reason to suppose …”
‘pro you remember the man we met there called Petersen?”
XYes. I had forgot you saw him, too.”
“Do you think he looked like a priest?”
“No. At least: I never thought of it. What are you suggesting? “
“These priests are still coming in from France, with their intent to overthrow the Queen, or to organise sedition until the Spanish land. What more suitable entry than Tolverne hidden in its quiet creek in the woods?”
“It would be suitable but that the Tolverne Arundells are as loyal as we are!”
“Perhaps I imagine things. Perhaps I am over-sensitive about someone who bears the same name as myself. But it but the change is not so hard as you may imagine. There were some lectures at Oxford … a man named Curry … it calls many of one’s beliefs in question. I can understand a man like Sir Anthony, a thought eccentric at any time, perhaps driving himself so hard that at the last he finds he has worn out his new beliefs and is left only with the old. Like someone with a wooden board trying to rub away a stone …”
A rat squeaked in the wainscot; after a moment it went hobbling away. We became drowsy and warm. I remember thinking before I dropped off of the difference in our positions; I without name or lands or independence, a base son of a great family much in debt; and he already master of this fine house and estate, rich and unencumbered, sure so far as one could be sure of a life of activity and distinction.
Two or three days after we got home I was alone with Mrs Killigrew and said to her:
“Did you say you knew the Farnabys, madam?”
“I knew Mrs Farnaby in Devonshire when she was a girl. Her father was my father’s steward.”
“Have you heard they are in distress?”
She had not. I told her what I knew and she bent over her lace.
“Your father does not always tell me of the day to day happenings on the estate … I wish I had money to send them, or gifts, but alas …”